What Cars From Your Childhood Should This Brewery Honor With Its Next IPAs?

With so many IPAs and other microbrews out there, it seems as if they’re going to be struggling to find new names soon. Besides, they all have to be different or it will be like going to my kid’s school concerts and there’s like half a dozen Aidens and Ryans.

I’m very aware that open containers of alcohol and motor vehicles don’t mix, but from an Autopian standpoint, you’d think there’d be more beers out there with motorcar-themed titles.

Sure, there are a few of them, like the Flat 12 from Bierwerks and one from Breckenridge named after a rather forgotten chunk of pre-collapse Chrysler called 72 Imperial.

Still, there could be many more. I was happy to see that Massachusetts brewery Trillium is now releasing what they claim to be the first of their “Dashboard Series” that pay tribute to the cars that we grew up in. Well, “we” seemingly meaning millennials and some GenXers based on their initial entry.

Here’s how I saw it described on Facebook:

“Inspired by the familiar cars of our childhood, Grand Caravan is the first entry in The Dashboard Series, our new lineup of West Coast IPAs. Each is a nod to the rides that took us everywhere.”

The first one is called “Grand Caravan”, with the dashboard of the first generation model of the extended-wheelbase Dodge minivan shown on the packaging.

It’s an easy choice, considering it’s the family car that many people of a certain age grew up in as rather new vehicles, and some of which still roam the earth as battle-scarred warriors like the one pictured on The Black Key’s seemingly incongruously titled album El Camino.

Exactly what the next vehicles in the supposed “series” will be are not shown on the brewery’s website as far as I could tell, which is just as well. Let’s face it: as Autopians this selection process is a task made just for us.

I can start, but my family’s cars were a bit too strange to really make sense for this nostalgia series. Our Volvo 240 wagon might work but that has too much modern-day hipster baggage,  not to mention people today thinking it’s a lot cooler they probably should. However, I could think of one car that was very thick on the ground back in the day. If your childhood took place anywhere from the late sixties up through the nineties, at least a few of your friend’s parents almost certainly drove some form of Oldsmobile Cutlass.

I’d split the difference of that big year range and chose the Cutlass Ciera, a front wheel drive General Motors “A” body Oldsmobile version of what was also sold as the Chevy Celebrity, Buick Century and Pontiac 6000, or GOOOLE.

Available with the Iron Duke four or various V6s, only the last ones of the 1982-96 run had anything over 150 horsepower. Thankfully, they were able to get pronounced torque steer even with the base 92 horse gas engine (the rare diesel only pumped out 85 but had a stump-ripping 165 lb-ft of torque).

If we’re talking dashboards here, the Ciera really encapsulates that mid-eighties GM gestalt; straight lines, fake wood, and every one of the many rectangles framed in simulated chrome. One look at the dashboard will take you back in time to 800 degree-hot Pizza Hut personal pans and games of Galaga.

I never saw one with a tachometer and full instruments like above; I didn’t think you could get one with more than a gas gauge and 85MPH speedometer with a painfully highlighted “55” like the one below.

How about you? What car and dashboard do you think Trillium should chose for the next beer in their series? The duller and more unsung the better, I say. Let’s hear your choices!