Look online and you can find “best gifts for…” lists everywhere. They’re a fantastic resource and a great way to find special whatevers for the people you love in your life, but at the same time, they make me want to puke. Just violently regurgitate a whole torrential column of hot, chunky vom, like some revolting bile-filled geyser. Why? Not because they’re bad or anything, but because nobody seems to have the ‘nads to try to do the opposite, to really put some effort into finding the absolute worst, least desirable, really, deeply, un-wantable gifts for a particular group.
Until now.
Yes, for the first time on the Free Internet, we, the Autopian, will be compiling a list of the absolute worst gifts for the gearhead in your life. Which is likely also you, since you probably love cars, too, because you’re here. But let’s say you have to get a present for a fellow car-loving friend? What if they’re sick of all of your thoughtful, well-considered gifts and are ready for a real steaming pile of crap instead?
We got you covered. So now, please, thrill to this carefully curated selection of gifts designed to disappoint, disgust, and repel even the most ardent car-lover in your life:
Somehow, the Fuel Shark is still around! Remember the Fuel Shark? It’s this buttplug-shaped thing with a blue LED in it that you’re supposed to plug into your 12V socket, and it’ll magically make your car save gas, with the power of pseudoscience nonsense, while seemingly doing nothing. I debunked these idiotic things about a decade ago, and yet somehow you can still buy them.
Any true gearhead would be absolutely miserable to get a pack of these overpriced placebo-snake oil-dongles. The one thing they may truly enjoy, though, is how the image used in the Amazon page to sell these things includes a picture of a car.
A Tesla. A car that uses zero gasoline. So, what happens if you plug a Fuel Shark into a Tesla? Will it start to make gas? Fill the trunk up with 91 octane premium?
Anyway, these ridiculous plastic garbage-bulbs are guaranteed to disappoint!
What if the car lover you want to dismay is too jaded for Fuel Sharks, and demands something that, you know, costs more money? Then there’s a great option! One of these nearly $500 EMP Shields! They’re designed to protect your car in the event of an electromagnetic pulse, the kind that would happen if there was, say, a nuclear war.
I suppose they’re also supposed to help in the event of a massive solar flare or something like that, but, really, if this thing actually does anything – a pretty significant if – the use cases are all situations where civilization-ending sort of events happen. So, best case for this thing (it actually works) is also worst case for civilization at large.
A joyless gift, guaranteed to make anyone you give it to feel, at best, uneasy about the useless box they can install in their car.
Here’s something unfun for the automotive DIYer in your life! Give the gift of rust, wherever they may live! Why should all the poor saps who live in Michigan have all the luck? Thanks to this fantastic kit consisting of real sea salt and a top-notch spray bottle, you can bring the magic of debilitating rust damage even to the dryest parts of Arizona or New Mexico!
Just apply salty water generously to your car’s frame or body and just wait for that iron oxide goodness to take hold!
What car lover wouldn’t like to own an icon of motoring history? We all would! Well, maybe except for this one icon of automotive history, Ralph Nader’s influential book that doomed one of the coolest cars ever to come out of America, the Chevrolet Corvair. Sure, Nader has made a lot of very important points about keeping huge corporate power in check, but the Corvair was awesome, and I can’t forgive Ralph for that.
Just because he doesn’t know how to drive a rear-engined car, we all have to suffer? Please.
This book is guaranteed to end up forgotten about on the floor of your favorite car-obsessive’s bathroom.
You know what is at the very bottom of nearly every gearhead’s wish list? One-quarter of a rubber foot! And you can buy just such a fourth of a foot to give as the gift no one asked for! Ever!
Even your car-loving friends who also love feet, in more complex and erotic ways will likely not be remotely satisfied by this rubber foot, because 3/4 of the foot are missing! This satisfies no one!
What’s a car geek going to do with 1/4 of a rubber foot? Fuck-all, that’s what! They’re not putting this on their dashboard, they’re not keeping it in their tool box, they’re not going to set it up surrounded by their extensive collection of Hot Wheels.
They’re just going to open the box, see this, and look at you with a devastating mix of disgust and dismay! You’ll never get over it! This gift will make everyone feel weird and wrong! Guaranteed!
Who doesn’t love novelty parking signs? These have been a staple for people super into one particular kind of car, with signs that read things like CORVETTE PARKING ONLY or RESERVED FOR SKODAS ONLY or something like that.
But you know what would make one of these signs really undesirable? If, instead of a specific kind of car, the sign read CHRONIC BEDWETTERS ONLY!
Imagine this sign standing proudly in front of your driveway, reminding everyone in your neighborhood that, yes, your mattress is absolutely, constantly soaked with the shameful emissions of a lifetime bedwetter. Nobody wants this!
And finally, how about the gift that I suspect precisely zero car-obsessed people are hoping to get for the holidays this year: lutefisk.
Lutefisk, the Norwegian, um, “treat” that is made from dried cod and then soaked in lye, yes lye, is generously known as an “acquired taste” and is more known for having a “confusing and unpleasant texture and taste,” with many descriptions of the flavor suggesting it’s like an amalgam of fishy, soapy, and ammonia. So kind of like mixing Dawn and tuna can juice into a litter box, swirling it all together, and then somehow making it all slimy and soggy before going to town on it with a spoon.
If you know someone really, really into cars, and you decide to get them three and a half pounds of lutefisk, you will have failed.
Spectacularly. Bravo.
[Ed Note: We have embedded Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy 19.5 pounds of lutefesk or anything else using those links we might get a commission. –MH]
(top image: Deposit photos, Auto-Union)
I’ve seen people selling little rubber fingers giving the ‘Jeep Wave,’ the foot could be a whole new spin on trend!
“ made from dried cod and then soaked in lye” that’s how you make olives edible, or make bacon fat into soap. Cod is pretty tasty on its own, or soaked in beer.
“Instant Ocean” I hope it says just add water on it somewhere.
There’s a missed opportunity here! Put the salt and the spray bottle together in a box with graphics of rusting Jeeps, and put a round “seal” on it with “Endorsed By David Tracy” on an outer ring, with the big smiling face in the center!
“Taste o’ Michigan Home Rust Kit”
Useless Christmas gifts? How about another muscle cars of the 1960s coffee table book. I have about five of them. I love my family, I love my friends, but for the sake of all that’s holy, no more! Also, thanks for being the only car site that doesn’t tell us that a great gift is a $6,000 driver’s watch.
It does? how do we know? I’d love to see how this was proven / test methodology.
Correction: The Ralph Nader book is only the second worst gift.
The worst is to gift them a sleepover at Ralph Nader’s American Museum of Tort Law in Winchester, Connecticut.