If you’ve worked with as many cheap used cars as I have, you start to develop a sense of whether a car can be trusted or not, just by driving it a few hundred feet. The noises it makes, the smells it emits, and the vibrations it translates through the steering wheel and seat can tell an entire story within the span of a few minutes. It’s the same way with people. Hang around with enough different folks, and it’s easy to tell who can be trusted and who can’t.
After reading Jason Torchinsky’s Cold Start on the inefficiencies of the Wonka Mobile, I don’t think I’d trust him or his car to drive me around the factory (or anywhere, for that matter). Sadly, the kids in the movie didn’t have that survivor instinct. Moonball96 makes a good point:
Anyone else ever notice that the Wonka Mobile only had enough room for 4 passengers and a driver? Almost like Wonka knew…. there wouldn’t be some kids and adults joining at this point in the tour….
Hell, even if I did decide to make it into the Wonka Mobile, I probably wouldn’t last long. From ChefCJ:
Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of safety violations
Jason also wrote a rebuttal to a competitor website regarding the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet, arguing that while no one really wanted it, that’s part of what made it so interesting. Personally, I think there’s definitely a market for a true crossover convertible—why else would Land Rover build the Evoque convertible? Jason Weigandt agrees with me and makes another good point at the same time.
I always get mad when people bash on the concept of the CrossCab. I can tell you exactly who would want a vehicle like this: My mom, who wants a convertible, but also wants the height of a SUV. And she doesn’t want a tiny two-door sports car, either. Also, there’s no way someone like my mom could ever figure out how to operate the soft top and windows in a Wrangler or Bronco.
Too often we forget that not everyone is an enthusiast.
Speaking of the Murano CrossCabriolet, the entire reason I’m writing COTD is that Mercedes Streeter is out on the road with The Autopian’s CrossCab right now, driving from Los Angeles to Texas. Unsurprisingly, she ran into what sounds like wheel bearing trouble early on in her trip. The noise prompted 5VZ-F’Ever and Ever, Amen to ask a question we’ve all probably thought before:
Would you rather experience “what’s that noise?” or “what’s that smell?” while road-tripping?
On that front, I’ll have to agree with GENERIC_NAME:
I think I’d prefer a noise. Smells are usually more urgent.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: Warner Bros
OMG I got a callout in COTD!!! I HAVE MADE IT!!!!!!
Noise and smell I can handle. Vibration is another story.
I think people would get even more upset if you flipped the tables and off roaded a convertible. Think VW Rabbit Baja, or Mercedes SL Sahara…
Lots of Jeeps and Land Rovers have soft-tops too.
Don’t people still drive convertibles to go skiing? Sometimes the spring weather changes.
I can think of several cases where I drove a convertible in dubious terrain.
I bought beater convertibles for that purpose, but there are some people that buy new cars to do dumb stuff. Some even buy that Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato
Why hasn’t this COTD list any meat? You can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!
*riff*
Ha, funny, as Gene Wilder actually said he’d accept the role of Willy Wonka only if he could do this:
“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause. […] [F]rom that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”
I also heard that they wanted him to wear a grey flannel suit or something. He felt something more whimsical would be more fitting. He ended up designing all of Willy wonkas outfits.
Yeah, like in the book Wonka wore an extremely tall top hat but Wilder personally came up with the design for the top hat he wore in the film.
Indeed, the sartorial choices for the book made by Roald Dahl and the original illustrator, Joseph Schindelman, *and* for the film made by Wilder are all excellent. The book and the film in and of themselves stand on their own merits, that’s for sure!!
(Let us not ever speak of the utter abomination inflicted upon us by Tim Burton & Johnny Depp and how the latter himself came up with his character’s wardrobe, good grief.)
Wilder really crushed it for about a decade.
The Producers, Wonka, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein.
Fronkensteen.
Don’t forget the Richard Pryor buddy comedies, Silver Streak and Stir Crazy.
That was Johnny Depp? I thought it was Michael Jackson.
As an insufferable “nyehh book accuracy equals better movie” pedant earlier in my life I liked the Depp version better because it kept truer to the darker Roald Dahl origins (including the Oompa-Loompa poems).
Looking back, it’s a lot harder to enjoy anything Depp stars in nowadays, and Wilder is just so damn charming that I’ve greatly softened on the earlier film.
…I still like Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator the most though, because of how batshit insane it is (and how it delightfully skewers the US decision makers).
Ha, yeah, likewise about the pedantry re: hewing close to the books making for better films though I had already changed my mind before Burton’s version came out. I was indeed a bit insufferable myself, lol.
And when I saw the Burton film it came across as exceedingly twee. Yeah, for all their ostensible goth and edginess Burton and Depp are actually nauseatingly twee…
Years ago I saw a remarkably candid interview with one of the writers for the Burton film. He said he’d never seen the original film and deliberately avoided seeing it while working on the Burton film; he was proud of how dark and edgy the screenplay and the final film product were but then he finally saw the original film and was chagrined to see how much darker and edgier it actually was compared to the Burton film, lol. Apparently he was rather kicking himself for not having gone further himself.
Also, the Burton film had that whole origin story with the authoritarian dentist dad that was not in any of Dahl’s works so that film went off the rails in terms of being true to the book despite having all those book elements like the aforementioned poems.
Yeah, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is all too lamentably underrated and underappreciated. While Quentin Blake is indeed a good illustrator (in fact he was Dahl’s favorite illustrator) the illustrator of the original U.S. editions, Joseph Schindelman, did an excellent job and his work was a lot closer to the spirit of these two books than Blake’s more light-hearted and more cheerful illustrations.
Is Schindelman who illustrated the Vermicious K’nids in the second book? That was actually a pretty damn scary image, just this inky black void creature with two massive staring eyes.
Oh, yeah, that was Schindelman! Yeah, pretty damn scary, especially when they spelled out the word SCRAM with their own bodies.
Never got my kids a first edition of that book because when they were very young they were more suspectible to nightmares than I was at that age. They were scared enough as it was by the scene of the boat going through the tunnel in the original film (worth noting, though, that they were not the least bit scared by the Burton film, lol.) Now that they’re adults they absolutely love the original film.
Ha, now I gotta find my Schindelman-illustrated editions before my kids come home for the holidays so they can read them…
I’d have cast Marylin Manson for the role of Willy Wonka in the remake. He’d have been so perfect.
If I have heard rightly, that first take was also the first time the children met him, so it really was probably a pretty wild experience for the kids.
God, I love that movie. I think I was prime age when I saw it. I think I have pictures with a similar outfit as Charlie. Gene Wilder is exceptional.
Really? I think you are in cahoots with the EV GANGS. the car is clearly a duplicate of the Dynamic Industrial Renovating Tractormajigger,” or D.I.R.T. for short. From the cat in the hat