Egads, it’s been so long since we’ve had a real, genuine Automotive Would You Rather! It’s 2023, a year I thought was a prime-number year until I actually checked, which means it’s the ideal time to get back into the hypothetical and ethical mud wrestling that is Would You Rather. This week we’re going to ease back into things in a gentle sort of way, with consciousness-swapping and drug-induced crimes. Let’s jump right in, dammit, what do you want, a cake asking you to please, read on, written in frosting, and the cake is shaped like a DKW Schnellaster, and the inside is red velvet cake? Because that sounds good.
SCENARIO ONE: The Genie of the Fuse
There’s a huge storm out as you’re driving around, with so much lightning flashing in the sky so you feel like a teen pop idol walking down the carpet to the MTV music awards, paparazzi all in your face. Your shitbox sputters and stalls, forcing you to pull onto the shoulder and brave the soaking rain to see what the hell is going on.
You smell burning electrical smells, so you pop off the under-hood fusebox cover, where you see some wisps of smoke arising. As you peer into the smoky box, filled with multicolored fuses that look like a bunch of Jolly Ranchers shoved into tiny slots, a determined bolt of lightning strikes the top of your open car hood, sending gigawatts of electricity through your hand, body, and into the fusebox.
You’re knocked on your ass, stunned, and see a partially melted fuse in your fingertips. Out of the fuse curls a glowing green tendril of smoke, which soon forms into a strange, nearly humanoid figure.
“I am Gary, Genie of the 15 amp fuse!” bellows the figure, vaporous arms raised. “Your body provided the conduit to the power I needed to be free! For your service and sacrifice of your eyebrows, you shall be rewarded!”
“With a wish of my choice?” you ask, so excited you forget how much pain you’re in.
“Ha ha ha no! That’s lamp genie shit. Automotive fuse genies can only do one thing: let you transfer your consciousness into any car, and then re-materialize wherever that car ends up!”
“Uh, I’m not so sure I really wan–”
“IT IS DONE,” bellows the genie, who then disappears with a wet pop, leaving you confused and smoldering by the side of the road.
Over the next few days you learn about your new power: you can walk up to any car, and, by staring at it, find your mind and body transferred into the car itself. You see the world from the car’s perspective, you feel and hear the people inside, feel stuff shoved into your trunk, you sense the speed and the intoxicating flavor of gas or battery-electricity, but you still have to go where you’re driven. When you arrive, you can will yourself back into human form, with your clothes relatively intact, as a bonus.
You can use your power to get places, you can feel what it means to be a car, and that’s incredible. It makes you a better driver, and you learn so much about suspensions and power delivery, because you feel it. Also, you hear all kinds of crazy conversations.
SCENARIO TWO: Oysters And Weird Scabs
You’re driving around when you see a food truck that sells oysters. That’s a pretty unusual thing to see, and you’re so intrigued that you completely forget about your incredibly severe allergies to oysters. Plus, their mascot, a very sexy oyster, kinda hooked you in. You pull over on the side of the road, spraying gravel like a massive mineral spit-take, leap from your car and order a huge bucketful of oysters. You greedily suck them down like a starving otter, and then immediately swell up like an oozing zeppelin right there on the side of the road. You flop down, staring at someone’s old Porsche 928 there in the parking lot across from you. It’s terrifying to see, your reddened, pulsating body, which is why you’re thankful when the oyster vendor leaps from the truck and injects you with a hypodermic needle, which provides instant relief.
The swelling goes down in moments, and the oyster vendor seems pleased that he was able to save your life. Of course, there is a price, and you see it forming on your forearm, moments after the Oyster Vendor yanked out the syringe: a red, key-like shape rising like a hive. In a few painful moments, the hive grows more solid, and forms a dense scab.
You’ve never seen anything quite like it. The Oyster Vendor smiles wide, locks eyes with you, and quickly rips the scab off your skin. You yelp in pain, rubbing your forearm, and watch as the Oyster Man puts the scab-key into the door of the Porsche 928, gets in, and starts the car. He circles the parking lot and stops by you. The window rolls down and he speaks:
“First, you’re welcome. Second, we’re in business together now, my friend! I saved your life with this anti-oysterdeath serum, but a side effect of it is that you will now grow a painful but fully functional scab-key for any car you stare at, intently. As payment for saving your life, I will occasionally call upon you to grow scab keys for me, for cars I may want. And, of course, you can do it for any cars you want, too! Keep them if you like, or bring them to me and I’ll sell them for you (taking only a 14% cut) and, best part, aside from the stealing part, it’s all nice and legal!”
You’re a bit stunned, but the serum seems to have affected your thinking, too, because this seems like maybe an okay deal. Take any car you want? And, it seems, you can actually grow working scab electronic key fobs, too? How the hell does that work? This is some powerful magic.
Okay, so what’s it going to be? Which ridiculous, sort of biological-adjacent scenario do you want to be a part of?
There is no such thing as a sexy oyster. You must have been thinking of bearded clams.
I went with the fuse Genie option cause uh, I’m a girl and uh, I’ve taken a Fiat 500 on Costco runs. If my hands and feet are wheels that means I’m well…it all gets delightfully kinky from here…
C’mon, Torch. This was the perfect opportunity to work in a “Shower Clams Linguine”bit.
You’re better than this…
Jason weed is still illegal in the Carolinas. Be careful.
Jason weed is probably universally illegal. It’s still worth partaking in the Jason weed.
Love that the ability to transform yourself back into a human is a “bonus”, I think I’d need to be really bloody sure of retaining the will to do that under all circumstances. We haven’t even explored the owner question; would I have an owner/driver and if they had no mechanical sympathy what kind of messed up relationship would that be. If they were scum the ability to leave them stranded with no warning would be entertaining
Make a ton legally repossessing cars! Hey you get to pick the car erego the driver so genie not too bad a deal.
It started with the wheelbarrow of shrimp and now we’re at oyster-scab-keys.
What’s your deal with seafood? No judgies…just curious.
I don’t want to play this game anymore.
Jesus Torch. The only comment is “where do you get your drugs, and are they expensive?” BTW this shit makes my head hurt more than a marathon of Tracy wrenching on his shitboxes an hour before he has to leave on a 1K journey to rustville…God help you son.
The car possession. I would try Inception, stare my own car and probably be trapped. Unit Rust-O-Man (aka David Tracy) says can fix it and I end up at his place.
These are both some kind of body-mod horror show. What happened to having two appealing options, each with a somewhat inconvenient twist?
And yes, I consider being a car, while someone else drives it, almost certainly very badly, to be a nightmare. I hate sitting in the passenger seat, and that’s when I trust the person,and I know where we’re going!
And I don’t even want to think about the second opinion. I regret having read it.
Do I age while I’m in car form? Is this an eternal-life hack, where as I’m getting older I can spend more and more of my time as a car to extend my lifespan? Is that even desirable? What if they do maintenance on the car/me while I’m in there? Where do I reside in the car? Does this invoke a Ship of Theseus-type philosophical conundrum?
I still choose the genie.
I just know that oyster vendor will make my life a living hell. Owning unlimited cars has to get boring at some point anyway. I’d rather be the car.
Can you sleep while being driven, or are your eyes clamped open A Clockwork Orange style?
Does the car have flip-up headlights? Up is open, down is closed. Otherwise, pinned open.
Alternatively, you could go with lights on, eyes open. Anything with DRLs, you can never quite close your eyes.
Another alternative, you only have eyes if the car has cameras. 360 camera will be trippy.
I had an incident involving violent nocturnal projectile vomiting as a kid from too many raw oysters. Gimme the fuse genie thing.
I’d pick the genie option, if only because I could get away with doing well over the speed limit constantly, and once changed back into human form, no one would be any the wiser. Think of what it would be like for the hoon and the machine to be one and the same! I’d totally want to be a Fisher Fury with a Hayabusa engine shoved in it, and maybe switch it up at some point and be a Russian Armata Tank if I need to be less vulnerable.
Except that you’re not in control. You’re being driven.
In which case, I’d become the limousines and luxury cars of powerful people instead. At least I could hear interesting conversations.
It would be hard not to be an F1 car, just once…
Not a fan of having my trunk stuffed……. i would have to go with the scab key and oysters are my fave!
Firstly, this is very disturbing, and I am going to have some very odd dreams tonight.
Secondly, I would like to choose option one and become the Doctor Doolittle of automotive repair.
You know what? I want to be a car. Hopefully the stuff-stuffing of my trunk is at least done with care though.
The genie thing would make you the world’s best diagnoser of car issues. Imagine going to Copart auction yards and touching every car and taking detailed notes about what’s wrong with each of them and then selling that information.
I don’t know if I’d get much use out of the genie powers, but at least I’m not guaranteed to be accessory to auto theft, so I guess that’s the option?
On the other hand, could you talk the oyster vendor into an alternate business plan, where you sell low-priced replacement keys? I mean, with the cost of new keys and programming easily running into the hundreds of dollars, you sell anyone (I mean, anyone who can ante up ownership in their name and doesn’t think too much about the production process) new keys for like $49.95, you’ll easily generate a ton of much more legal business.
Give me some questionably stored roadside oysters and let’s rip some scabs, baby, I finally have a viable business idea! I’ve got some tabasco in my ass pocket and a valet parking lot to raid.
Theft is certainly more useful, but I have questions.
If fueled in car form, is my human hunger/thirst sated?
How much business will my locksmith hustle get when they see I am handing them a scab? Seems like people might appreciate that I don’t have to do anything beyond look at their cars, but the scab part might be off-putting.
Can Oyster Vendor be trusted as a fence? Can he fence things beyond the cars?
I’m just saying I’ll be really pissed when he turns state’s evidence on me. If I can’t trust my oyster guy / fence, who can I trust?
Eh, just use your scab-key power while you are on the prison transport bus to make a key to unlock the door just as the bus passes a Kia dealership on the way to the prison. Then it is just a Sedona ride back to freedom!
Have you seen what dealerships charge for keys? I’ll gladly use your scab
I’ve been in enough accidents where I get hurt, I damned sure don’t want to be “in one” in one where the car gets totaled
I don’t like picking scabs either, but that’s better than feeling my body get mangled and torn apart
Sure you think, pick the genie.. feel, nay know what it’s like to be an F40 piloted by some talented YouTuber along Mulholland. That is the fantasy, the reality is the felling of DNA seeping into your upholstery… So much DNA…
Scab key is the obvious answer.
“Plus, their mascot, a very sexy oyster, kinda hooked you in.”
This is why I am a member.
Anyone else mildly disappointed that we got the oyster truck as the illustration, instead of the very sexy oyster?
Or have I been on the internet for too long?
Sexy oyster drawings are limited to Autopian Rich Corinthian Leather-level members ONLY.
I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to be.
Can we get an oyster that’s passably attractive at Velour?
How about “make sure the lights are off” vinyl attractive?
COTD.
I love how you thought this was a good way to shut this down, but then the membership rallied.
Not showing us the sexy oyster is just plain shellfish.