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!
A body was my first thought as well.
Too bad they’re only doing IPA’s. Ican get behind damn near every kind of beer besides IPA’s. So gross.
I never understood the IPA obsession, particularly with insufferable hipster beer snobs (assuming they’re still around—alcohol has given me instant migraines for about 12 years now, so I stopped drinking). If you like them, that’s fine and I didn’t mind one on occasion, but most of the more expensive and raved about stuff were IPAs. I tried a bunch of them and they all tasted about the same and there was no complexity, only overpowering bitterness . . . then again, maybe I finally answered that question for myself. As for breweries, maybe iIPAs are easy to make or a way to get noticed by the snobs who might be influencers? (Though for me, after trying too many highly recommended beers, anything the snobs advocated was stuff I’d avoid.) I’m sure a lot of people genuinely like IPAs, but they were also kind of a thing in the way hot sauces were (are?) with a certain set of insecure guys who felt they proved their manhood by tolerating terrible stuff. “Bro, bro, bro, habaneros are for sissies, bro. You need to try the Grim Reaper Black Demon Ghost Pepper. They’re a special hybrid grown in tiny batches by one dude in Arizona who feeds the plants his own blood. Bro, they come with a portable defibrillator!”
I stopped going to brewpubs because they’d have eight beers on tap and seven of them would be IPAs. IPAs became so ubiquitous that I just got tired of it. I think it’s because IPAs are, as you suggest a “your masculinity determined by what bitterness standard you can drink” or IPAs just use hoppy bitterness to cover unaged, lazy beers made by lazy people and IPAs cover poor brewing habits. I’m done with them.
Yeah, it takes skill to come up with something with balanced flavor. “Bro, this is what sailors would drink on long voyages!” Yeah, the also ate ship’s biscuits with worms in them and nobody consumed that out of preference, it was done because they were among the only options in a time of limited preservation capability.
My mother drove us around in a BMW 2002ti in every-German-car-of-the-seventies-orange.
I’d go with 2002 for the regular IPA, 2002ti for the double and 2002tii for the triple.
Coincidentally, there is a brewery that has a beer with an Inka orange 2002tii on the label.
It has to be Mini Trucks. My mother had (and still has) a 4th gen Mazda B series single cab long bed. It was great riding in the rear jump seats as a kid, our family dog Indigo (Australian Shepard mix shorthair) we had for nearly 18 years had a pillow between the front seats to lay on, making her the cutest armrest I’ve ever seen, with her head perfectly positioned for pets.
Simple, Low, Light, small, cheap, and something that’s mostly a memory for us, as the small pickup is dying and has been dying for a long time in the US. The Maverick is as large as a Ford Explorer, it’s not a small Truck, and it’s not a small Pickup.
I wish it wasn’t true but it sadly is.
Okay, two things.
Trillium is a FANTASTIC fucking brewery. This is something I’ll need to find. I keep interesting beer labels and line the inside of my kitchen pantry door with them.
Secondly, are you familiar with Big Truck Farm Brewing out of Parkton, MD? Each one of their beers is a David Tracy wet dream being named after an iconic old school truck/offroader such as Highboy, Halfcab, K5 Topless, etc. More so than that, their labels ARE THE ACTUAL TRUCKS!!!! Incredible stuff.
No mention of Big Truck Brewing? Their ‘K5 Topless’ Blonde is the only beer named after an actual model, but all the labels have real vehicles. Cruiser (Landcruiser) and High Boy (old ford 4×4) get a pass I think.
I literally was typing my comment as you posted yours.
Most suitable for the Grand Caravan to be the strongest beer of the bunch.
After a day stuck inside one of those boxes with a pile of screaming kids who are all excited to over-eat-pizza are on their way to some birthday party – you need a stiff beverage.
When I was born in 1974 my mom drove a yellow over brown ’73 Mustang Sportsroof. When she was pregnant with my sister she needed something bigger, so she bought a new ’76 Malibu wagon. It was dove grey, but according to her I always called it the “green-grey Malibu”. So I’ll suggest a Green-Grey IPA with a grey Colonnade Malibu wagon on the can. This was in Venezuela, so make it a tropical IPA. Maybe passionfruit, since we had a vine growing on our house and it’s still my favorite fruit juice. Thank you. 🙂 I don’t even drink IPAs, but I would 100% drink this.
We had a yellow Super Beetle when I was a kid. That might be good for an IPA. Not exciting, but fun in an inoffensive way.
Plus, yellow!
I could see the old aircooled VWs as ideal candidates for hefeweizens! They’re light and made from a very small list of ingredients.
Plus, “Kombi” sounds like a rad name for a wheat beer.
Pontiac Parisienne Pilsner
Oldsmobile Omega Oktoberfest
Chrysler K-Car Kolsch
AMC Ambassador Ale
Saturn S-Series Stout
Dodge Daytona Double IPA
K-Car Kolsch is a brilliantly catchy name. And both things are inherently crushable.
Since IPA manages to be both an awful formulation of beer and at the same time one of the most pretentious of brews, I nominate the Ford Elite for namesake duty.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who can’t stand IPAs.
IPA haters unite. I’m pretty sure patient zero was Stone, with their Arrogant Bastard IPA, that tastes like swamp water and has pretentious flavor text on the bottle. IPA isn’t just a loathsome brew, it’s aggressively loathsome while cloaking its superiority complex under a veil of working-man cosplay (the initial IPAs were brewed for extremely long voyages at sea).
Therefore I nominate the 1994 Dodge Ram, patient zero for the aggro truck pandemic in which we still find ourselves.
That was one of the overpriced stupid IPAs I hunted down at the recommendation from several beer snobs. I’m pretty sure they were just convinced by the packaging.
International Harvester – Wheat Beer
Tata – IPA
MB 300SD – Doppelbock
Volvo 240 Wagon – Brown Ale
Chevy Suburban Imperial Stout
Mustang dash would sell out fast. I’d want to see a Challenger rallye dash (8k tach) for me.
An XJ could work as a popular family car but I think a ZJ Grand Cherokee is more fitting as they were even greater suburban warriors from my memory, and more XJs wound up in mud pits sooner so ZJs still feel more like grocery queens in my brain.
The next choice should be the Tempo. Upbeat, bubbly, enjoyable. Nothing like the car.
IPAs are absolutely disgusting and I grew up in the 80s. So I’m nominating the Ford Fairmount just because it popped into mind first as being not very attractive. Maybe that Subaru with the weird wheel. Or a dodge ram from that era.
This. I’ve tried IPA’s, usually on a dare. None taste good, no matter how much fruit is added.
My favorite car growing up was my Hot Wheels Club Member silver+black stripes Shelby Cobra. So, need a Porter or Stout named after that,
Yes! And they make the descriptions sound so good, but they’re always so bitter and gross.
Dodge Colt, specifically a 1985-88 hatchback/sedan (or 1987-91 wagon) with the most gloriously ’80s dashboard ever to grace an econobox. 00b0b_j2k7EPwAWsxz_0Cz0t2_1200x900-1024×771.jpg (1024×771)
Trillium also has “Storrowed” so box trucks can feel included
My parent’s cars were mostly jeeps which, while fine, don’t really fit the assignment. I’ll submit my friend’s dad’s 2003 poverty spec manual dodge neon. The only option it had was ac and it was 8 grand from the dealer
1992 Nissan Maxima (my 2nd car) and name it 4DSC.
If you know, you know.
The Eldorado IPA – Beer more bitter than the secretary you impregnated in the back seat only to fire her and hit her with an NDA so you wife wouldn’t find out and the kids would still think the stains in their seats were from coffee… Coffee as bitter as the hops in Eldorado IPA. Beer so bitter, it’s 30 years later and it still hasn’t f**king called the kids.
That’s a hell of a description. Nicely done.
The G-Body. Have a couple and you’ll be doing the G-Body Shuffle.
Gotta go with the first-gen Taurus, with it’s beautiful plastic wood. Bonus points for the digital gauge cluster!
Glad I scrolled down first, as the Taurus would also be my pick for this.
Give me the sedan for the IPA, wagon for the DIPA, and the SHO for the imperial.
IPAs for sure! A style that came out of obscurity to take over the market.
’94 LeBaron – an imperial stout, as thick and dark as an oil stain under a K-car.
I’m here for the Caravan one, but prior to that, I’m going with one called “Quantum Mechanics” where a bunch of VW guys stare under the hood of a US Passat wagon, wondering why it’s killing O2 sensors every 6 months.