I have to get up in like four hours to go to this Volkswagen Tiguan event and somehow I haven’t finished Cold Start yet. I haven’t even really packed yet! It’s only two days, so it shouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow I always seem to end up in these situations. You’d think I’d learn, but somehow, I don’t. It’d be impressive if I wasn’t so damn tired. But you still deserve a start, served cold, and you’ll have one. With some weird old Renault commercials.
Oh, one reason I got sort of sidetracked is because Matt asked me for another batch of Apple II-generated cars, which, you may recall, are a birthday perk for Velour-and-above level Autopian members. To make these images, I have an original 1979 or 1980-ish Apple II Plus randomize the pieces, put them together into a car, generate the name, and then to make it into something that can be actually sent out via modern computers, the game I/O port on the Apple II is used to trigger the shutter of a DSLR camera.
I do wish I could figure out how to keep the flash from firing, though. Anyway, the process looks like this – this is from last year, when we were making randomized robots, but the process is the same:
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Anyway, Matt needed a bunch more, but when I tried to get the thing going, I found the camera wouldn’t fire! Ugh.
I finally realized that half of the wires that went from the little optical switch unit to the game port annunciator and also to the camera shutter control had come loose, so I had to fix those. But I did, and they worked, and I got Matt 178 randomized cars before the camera battery died.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I’m tired and loopy, that’s why.
Let’s get back to car stuff. Or, at least giant foods being crash-tested for a Renault ad:
So, what do we have going on here? It looks like we have a German weisswurst (a Bavarian white sausage), a Japanese sushi roll, one of those big Swedish crispbread cracker-like things, and finally, a French baguette. Clearly, these foods are metaphors for the cars from those respective countries, at least I think they are, based on the text that says, in German, the safest cars come from France.
This 2005 ad highlights Renault’s five-star crash safety ratings, which I think makes more sense than this being a literal test of food collision safety, because I think in real tests the sausage may have fared better, though I suspect the sushi roll would still likely disassemble. The crispbread is always doomed, but if that baguette is even a little bit stale, I think it would shatter into a cloud of crumbs, at least partially.
The same ad agency, Nordpol+, made another crash-safety-focused spot, called Ballet:
This is a pretty fantastic ad, strangely beautiful and satisfyingly destructive, all at the same time.
Let’s see a rear-engined Renault ad, now! Here’s one for the Renault 10, a car I’m quite fond of, and it’s a simple one, where Renault offers to buy you a car, if it’s under $2,000 and has what the R10 has.
I think here the big guarantee that Renault wouldn’t have to buy anyone is the mention of the “separate compartment for the spare tire,” which was a sort of specific Renault hallmark. Remember, they did the same thing with the Dauphine:
Also, did you hear how they pronounced the name “ree-nault,” with a vocalized “t?” That’s how they thought Americans needed to hear the name to understand it, seemingly forgetting that we’ve been saying “Chevrolet” for decades.
Okay. I have to pack and get some sleep!
I remember RenaulT. I also remember SuBARoo.
And in the UK, high-UN-die (they did a whole campaign not long ago to fix that!)
When they first came to the U.S. they ran ads that said, “Hyundai, rhymes with Sunday.” To this day people will still say HAWN-die.
It took guts to come to the States with a very obviously Korean brand name, and not just for the pronunciation. I imagine a number of buyers dismissed them out of hand just for the country of origin.
Jason, your aortae don’t need any more stress, and according to the Haynes manual we can’t repair them with a rock and a hose clamp.
Please try your best to get a decent night of sleep every day – if that means Cold Start becomes a less reliable feature, so be it.
Let’s not even get into the pronunciation of Dauphine.
The way that pale, fat snausage suddenly explodes slightly after impact is going to give me nightmares tonight. I swear, it’s like some Gigeresque horror from an Alien sequel I no longer fully remember. Thanks Jason! >-| 😉
That car looks like it’s sticking its tongue out at me. How disrespectful!
Many food products were destroyed, until the superior energy absorbing properties of canned ham ultimately won out.
Deep cut. Of ham.
Great, now you’ve got me thinking about what foods would crash-test best.
I’m guessing that burritos and other wraps would do pretty well, because they have a pliable outer structural envelope. I feel like certain kinds of subs and hoagies could do well in side-on collisions but would utterly fail in small-overlap tests; the same holds true with hot dogs. The double-layer taco (the Taco Bravo from Taco John’s for the upper-midwesternerers) might be the ultimate survivor, since it has a structural crispy layer of a hard taco shell kept from crumbling by an outer soft taco shell, with a layer of refried beans acting as adhesive and energy dissipating structure.
JT, you don’t need or deserve this much stress. Might I make a suggestion? One evening, write two cold start features, use the first one in the morning, then you have a backup for the following day., This way you always make your deadline.
I am disappointed. I clicked on what I thought was going to be an article on Wienermobile crash testing.
It is well known in France that the village of Cadillac near Bordeaux has the mental hospital for the country’s craziest nutters.
Is that where they put the people who say “Cadillac converters?”
Came her for crashing Renaults.
Not disappointed.
The two commercials seem like a very French response to the old “Saab Suite” video. Or, maybe that Renault wasn’t loafing around about safety. Or something.
Hold up. Don’t you bury the lede and try to distract us with big phallic crash test sausages.
What on earth is there about the Tiguan worthy of an event? Is it just a Costco run where VW’s press team pours libations of Kirkland Signature wine and burnt offerings of rotisserie chicken to Piech, praying that the demo units will make it through the weekend without window regulators jamming or the infotainment crashing in front of the press?
Dude. This is great but we need you healthy and sound. Get that beauty sleep!
^This^
Once there was this brand who
Had a silent T and thought that nobody could say it
So when they finally made ads
They said “Ree-Nault” like we’re all just morons.
I couldn’t quite explain it
Since Chevy’s always beeeeeen here
Paraphrasing the Crash Test Dummies. Brilliant! Or should I say Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm?
Is the DSLR a Canon Rebel? If so, here you go:
https://thesweetcamera.com/turn-off-flash-on-canon-rebel/
If we did pronounce the “t” at the end of Chevrolet, Dinah Shore would’ve been singing a different song. Instead of “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” I guess it would have gone “Seen the US yet in your Chevrolet?”
Drive around Tibet? Celebrate the Tet?
Lose a bet?
Is it just me or does the header image look like a condom?
You’ve got that steep of a curve, huh?
According to the commercials, they’ve now got meds for that.
If nothing else works to kill the flash, black electrical tape applied directly over it will.
My thought exactly (said sympathetically as a “but there’s a more perfect solution and I want *that*” obsessor)
“Yes, but you shouldn’t HAVE to resort to that!” has probably cost me 3-5 years of my life, a combo of both actual time investment and losses due to stress.
The 30′ turning circle on the R10 is pretty impressive after yesterday’s revelation about the Fiat 500 Abarth.
Wonder if you could repurpose an old smartphone, most could use the headphone jack as a trigger so could maybe repurpose most of the current setup. I used to have a selfie stick that worked like that, and then you could have them dump to a google photo account that Matt can access, simplifying a little. You know, in your spare time 😉 Maybe a project for Otto?
Also the spare tire in the front is cool, like a cassette ejecting, not ideal if you have a tire blow out and careen bumper down into a ditch though.
No worries on the sleep, you can probably sleep through the Tiguan event as I’m sure it will be as riveting as the new RAV 4 launch. It’s got an even blander shade of gray this year! And cupholder size has increased 2mm!