It occurs to me that I didn’t really have to do a specific “scary car week.” Most of the time, this column is like an automotive version of Fear Factor anyway. These cars weren’t all that much scarier than the stuff I usually show you. But maybe they’ll inspire a little creativity: Your assignment today is to choose a car, then give me your best horror movie pitch that somehow involves that car.
Yesterday we delved into the fear of the unknown by looking at a couple of cars with practically no description and really bad photos. The Buick Rendezvous won, but it sounds like many of you who voted for it would rather have had a Pontiac Grand Prix – just not that Pontiac Grand Prix. The strange “no test drives” rule scared you off, as it probably should. Something is hinky there.
I actually did buy a car without test driving it once, a 1979 Plymouth Volare that I bought for $175. It had been sitting for a couple of years. I jump-started it, confirmed that it went into both Drive and Reverse, handed over the cash, put $10 of fresh gas in it, and drove it 20 miles home. It ran perfectly for six months until it died right in the middle of Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul, completely electrically dead. The culprit? A dead ammeter in the dash, through which all the car’s electrical current passed. I bypassed the ammeter, and it ran fine again. And then – here’s the funny part – I sold the car for $400.
I guess you could say cars are scary. Certainly the way some people drive them is scary. But just the very idea of an object, a device, into which we invest so much emotion is frightening. If there’s a ghost in the machine, we put it there. As such, cars have been well represented in the horror genre. Sometimes they’re the star of the show, sometimes they’re one of the good guys, and sometimes they’re a plot point. Your mission, on this day before Halloween, is to pick one of these cars, and come up with a scary scenario involving it. It doesn’t need to be a whole story; just a quick lunch-meeting pitch. If these cars aren’t really any scarier than our normal fare, make them so. Here’s a quick recap so you know what you’re working with.
1976 Chevrolet Camaro LT – $10,500
Camaros always seem to be the bad-guy cars in horror. Buddy Repperton, the ill-fated bully in Christine, drove one. So did that lifeguard dude in Stranger Things. But I can’t see this Camaro as a bad guy’s car. It’s an LT, pretty, but slow. It’s kind of the himbo of Camaros. Neither is it imposing enough to be an evil character on its own. Poor thing can’t even spin its own tires.
Where it could be used, however, is as a hero’s car, especially in a period piece set in the ’70s. Imagine a young paranormal investigator driving this thing around the Pacific Northwest chasing down leads on Bigfoot or something. The Camaro gets dirty, gets involved in a few chases, maybe even banged up a little, but it’s always fine at the start of the next episode.
1981 Porsche 928 – $2,500
A fully-depreciated German GT coupe is scary enough in its own right, especially one that doesn’t run. Your knuckles, sanity, and bank account are all going to suffer greatly putting this heap back on the road. But as a derelict object, a whole bunch of other supernatural possibilities exist. Maybe it’s haunted. But maybe it’s not looking for someone to love it, like Christine; maybe it’s actively trying to die, and doesn’t want to be disturbed.
That’s not bad, actually. How many shadetree mechanics has this old dead Porsche claimed over the years? How many jackstands have slipped, how many fires have started? And yet, somehow, the car survives. The current owner of this one is only alive because he never tried to fix it up; he just let it sit in the garage for twenty years. But what about the next owner?
2001 BMW 540i – $5,800
At first glance, this car actually looks like a good deal. And it may be; it’s well-maintained, more or less stock, and the seller seems to really care about it. But is it too good to be true, like that house in The Amityville Horror? Could there be some demons lurking in its past that only surface once it’s in the hands of a new owner?
That’s one way to go, but looking at this car, I can totally see it as a villain’s car in a horror movie. Some polite, well-dressed, dapper demon here to just ruin your day. Maybe Satan’s attorney, the enforcer who shows up in case of breach of contract. Lawyers drive BMWs, right?
2006 Buick Rendezvous CXL – $1,900
The car in the book and movie Christine is a 1958 Plymouth. The story is set in 1978, meaning that car is only twenty years old. If Stephen King had written that story today, it would be about a 2006 model car. Would it have been a Buick Rendezvous? Probably not. This is just about the least-scary car I can think of. The scariest thing about it is how many times I’ve mis-typed the word “Rendezvous” while writing about it.
Instead, I see this as the car that our doomed protagonists drive to the lake, or the lodge in the mountains, or whatever. The car that mysteriously won’t start when the monster is chasing them, even though it ran fine for the first two-thirds of the movie. Maybe the monster jumps on the roof, or smashes a clawed hand through the windshield. Maybe the final girl traps the monster in the car, and pushes it into the lake. Yeah, that’s not a bad use for this thing.
I guess I just did what I asked you all to do. Whoops. But I bet some of you can come up with better horror scenarios involving these cars. You’ve got all weekend to work on it. Have a happy and safe Halloween, and I’ll see you back here on Monday!
Nobody thought of the Buick being a last-car-turned-first-car that after 20 Halloweens safely parked in the garage is called on to convey an illegal-on-a-newly-issued-license number of teenagers to a haunted house on Halloween night while a notorious serial killer from the ’80s has escaped from prison?
Definitely the BMW. That’s the perfect villain ride. It won’t ever break down, because it’s got a human soul trapped inside.
I chose the Buick Rebdezvous to outrun zombies in San Anttonio on Haloween night. It’s the fastest of the whole bunch. They get bored and fall asleep.
A small time chronic loser sees the Camaro for sale on Facebook and spend his last 10 grand on the thing. He thinks it’s the perfect companion for his newly minted PI license.
He is driving to his new car to first case and as he passes a bus stop packed with nuns and people commuting to work the car suddenly accelerates and hooks into a classic Rockford turn wiping out the crowd of innocents.
The now rogue Camaro sputters away from the carnage unable to spin its tires as it begins hunting for new prey.
As part of the curse any eyewitnesses are convinced the perp was a Mustang because OF COURSE it was a Mustang. Any security cam footage shows what looks like a Mustang. Any physical evidence at the scene has a Ford oval on it. The police spend all their time chasing Mustangs.
The mild-mannered librarian uses her Rendezvous to stalk and run over the guys that raped her at a frat party 16 years ago. She then chases her nerd friends who didn’t stop them. Then, the popular cheerleaders that celebrated those guys and forced her to become rather invisible.
Nobody can guess what car are they using to maim and kill seemingly random people, because nobody gives a fuck about a Buick crossover. She then sells it to a young girl next town and somehow finds peace.
Guess now what happens next town?
Y’all remember The Mask where Jim Carrey would throw it out his window at night, and it would return? I picture similar but worse for the 928:
You’ve spent all weekend wrenching on it. Busted knuckles, stained everything, snapped bolts, but dammit you finally got some semblance of progress. New tires are on it so they’ll hold air, you’ve soldered some bad electrical work together, it’s not in a bad place. You come out Monday morning…. and the tires are flat! Wires have been chewed through! A fresh oil stain on the ground! Oh my god, it’s the project car that never ends!
Scariest is the porshe, good luck fixing it the amount of money and time it would take. 80s Porsches just a headache unless it’s air cooled. Still an expensive headache just probably worth something.
The Camaros is scary because it’s so ugly and burgundy on burgundy.
BMW is scary because the transmission and death by a thousand cuts
The only thing scary about the Rendezvous is bodily fluids that might be lurking.
It’s not the car I’d choose any other week (that’s the 540i), but the Porsche is EASILY the scariest of this group.
My vote goes to the 928. With that heap of shit, I’m sure the stories will write themselves.
Like you said about the Rendezvous except instead of just not starting, it *poof* supernaturally changes into the Porsche.
That would be one of Torch’s “Would you rather”: a Buick that turns into a Porsche that you have to live for an year with, but you’re not allowed to choose which Porsche.
It’s gotta be the 928. I picture something like a cross between Steven King and Quinton Tarantino, wherein a series of people aquire the car and go through every sort of financial tragedy imaginable trying to rehab the car and keep it on the road (broken marriages, lost homes, children taken by CPS, etc) only to wind up alone and destitute. Some sell the beast to the next victim, some buy it off the auction lot after it’s impounded (after abandonment, or found with a dead body inside) while one intrepid (and unfortunate) sole finds it abandoned in the woods and tries to claim it as his own, only to suffer the same fate as the other people in this horror show.
The E39 looks properly sinister, even devilish, in that color, and cast in that role the black grille and wheels actually suit it. Definitely driven by someone who offers bargains that inevitably end up costing far more than you expect. Hell, he’s probably selling the $2500 Porsche.
The unwitting buyer of the Porsche takes the deal because he wants something cool after years of shuttling kids in his wife’s milk-bland Buick Rendezvous. Something to show off like his neighbor’s classic Camaro. Something to reclaim his lost youth.
He’ll get his youth back alright…
The next week, his neighbor is found dead of carbon monoxide in his garage, the Camaro still running. It’s ruled a suicide.
In a freak and slasher-gruesome accident, his wife is killed when the Buick’s transmission slips.
Then, the cursed Porsche comes for his kids… In desperation, he tries to hunt down the seller in: “The Devil Drives a Red BMW”.
In theaters this Arbor Day.
Someone buys the BMW, drives it home, elated at their good fortune to acquire such a cool, iconic car!
The next day, they get in to drive to work, and the doors lock and the ignition refuses to start. After trying everything to get the car to release him or drive to work, he discovered a mysterious note in the armrest instructing him to feed currency into the air conditioning vent to the right of the steering wheel. He adds a dollar and the car’s dash lights up, and the car starts up, but when he starts to drive it, it stalls at the first stop sign. A $5 bill gets him down the street. After $40 gets him to the ATM, he loads up on the necessary currency to incentivize his car to function properly.
Eventually, our protagonist gets to work and home, tired but safe. $10 gets the door open, and he heads inside for dinner and sleep.
Still, he dreams about how great the car was when it was driving, and he is irresistibly drawn to repeating the experience the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that……
Endless spending just to preserve basic features. You seem to be describing ownership of a new BMW.
Porsche. And the movie is a sequel to Risky Business. But the script is written by Stephen King!
It’s 40+ years after the events of the original movie. Joel and Lana have married, with a couple of grown kids, they’re empty nesters now. Joel’s father passes away, but Joel and him had never really connected after Joel graduated from Princeton. Per his father’s wishes, he is cremated and after the funeral service, Joel is trying to decide what to do with the ashes. In the meantime, he is at the old house, helping his mom clear out his dad’s old things. The Porsche is still in the garage. Joel’s dad had been trying to restore it, but wasn’t quite there. Mom wants it gone, but in its current state, it’s not worth much, maybe $2500 or so. In that instant, a idea comes to his mind! Remembering that day long ago when Lana and him went to the lake in the car, Joel decides he’ll put dad’s ashes in the driver’s seat and push it into the lake. The car is towed over, and all goes as planned. Joel, Lana, and Mom say their farewells and push the 928 into the lake. Everyone returns to the old house, and settle in for the night.
The next morning, the Porsche is in the driveway, perfectly restored. Of course, everyone is freaked out, but Joel eventually figures that it’s just Barry or Miles playing a practical joke. So Joel gets in the car, keys in the ignition, and drives over see Miles who vehemently denies it.Then he goes to see Barry who also denies it, but suggests they go for spin in it to relive that night they went for a little joyride.
Then out of nowhere, an old Cadillac Coupe DeVille starts following them. Joel floors it and tries to lose him but can’t. After driving all over Chicago, he winds up on the same block where a Cadillac had chased Barry and him all those years ago. Joel winds up driving around this block, over and over. He can’t turn in a different direction, he is compelled by forces he can’t understand to keep driving around the block over and over and over, for eternity…
Unknown to Joel, Guido the Killer Pimp was murdered years ago, and his body dumped in the same lake.