What’s with the fake vents?
Have you noticed all these cars now with fake vents on the front fenders? I know they’re supposed to look like either exhaust ports or intake ports… or cooling ports… something… but they’re not.
…and now, apparently, you can go to your local car-bling store and buy them to retrofit your older car.
The thing to me is that they don’t do anything. It’s just an appliqué. So… it’s a little chrome-plated plastic sticker-ey thing that damages the paint on your car, and, eventually, will lose its chrome and just be a crummy looking piece of plastic on your fender, OR…. if you don’t clean the paint properly, the glue won’t stick right, and the thing will just fall off, and leave a gooey residue on your fender that’ll never really come off.
I’ve driven over 5,000 miles in the last 2 weeks. I can’t tell you how many Hyundais, Fords, Saturns, Buicks and so on I’ve seen with the factory-installed variety… and … get this… Ford Tauruses… dozens of them… with the aftermarket ones.
Back in the 50’s Buick Roadmasters had the fake ports…. they were supposed to be reminiscent of the old Deusenbergs, Auburns, Cords and other super-cars of the 30’s, that had the narrow bonnets, and the exhaust exited through the sides bonnet and into the fenders… or inline-engined fighter planes… depending on who you talk to.
Of course, now, almost 80 years later, very few car buyers have any idea what what a Duesenberg was, let alone what the point of the ports is supposed to be.
So… I can certainly understand aesthetics… I have 9 tattoos… but I don’t have any “because it looks cool” tattoos. My tattoos may not age as well as my skin… but barring catastrophic injury or infection, my tats should not peel or fall off. … and then there’s the fact that my tats all mean something.
I also have bumper stickers on my vehicles… 3 on my truck, 2 on my car…. but again… they actually mean something… other than, “I wish my car was a lot cooler than it actually is”
I guess what I’m getting at is that the factory-installed fake port things are… part of the design of the car… they’re unnecessary, and dorky looking… but they’re part of the car. To go to Pep Boys and spend $20 (or whatever) on fake plastic stick-on port-ey things… that (to me) says, “I hope you don’t recognize how lame my car is… are you dazzled by my fake port things?” They’re like the plastic hubcaps with the “spinner” things, to make your 14-inch steel rims look vaguely reminiscent of the 22-inch “DUB” rims with the extra bits that continue spinning after the vehicle has stopped. The plastic spinny bits to spin right… they wig out the balance of the wheels, and in a couple months, they look like crap (that is to say, more like crap than when they were new).
The fake vents, when they’re factory installed, say, “Well… we had to keep the fuel economy up, and tooling costs down… so… to make last year’s model seem new, and more powerful, this year, we tacked on these.”
The fake vents from Pep Boys say, “Well, yes, it’s a 10-year-old Cavalier, and the paint is just jumping off it. Sure, it’s 3 different colors, has 5 different tires (at least it has a spare… I wonder if it has air in it…), Oh, and there’s a crack that goes all the way across the windshield… The glove box doesn’t close… and the upholstery smells like…. mildew… and… catbox…. but … it’s a cool ride, and it deserves a little dressing up.”
… and that’s just sad.