The Car I Want (The Car I Deserve?)

04 Aug, 2026

I have two fantasies involving cars. On the one hand, I wish I owned a Mercury Colony Park. Historians are unsure which car Christ drove,¹ but I tend to think it was a Mercury Colony Park. From an aesthetic perspective, the Mercury Colony Park simply is the ideal car.

Yet, this longing will never be satisfied. Ere I was born, the Mercury Colony Parks grew old and world-weary. So they sailed to the undying lands. No mortal man has seen one since.

But I have another car-related fantasy, this one much more involved. It concerns a car yet unborn, so I have hope it will come to pass. This car is a small pickup truck. Sometimes, I have to haul things, and a pickup truck is well-suited for this purpose. Additionally, owning a pickup truck is a form of manly gender-affirming care, and I would like my gender to be affirmed. At the same time, I have no need or desire for a huge vehicle. Driving one makes me weirdly stressed.

This car is also a plug-in hybrid. I want to mostly be able to use it like an electric car -- partly because I'm woke, mostly because I've ran the numbers and discovered that would save me money. But I sometimes have to go on long car trips, and I don't want to spend a long time recharging in the middle of them.

This car certainly has all wheel drive. Geology is sometimes located in isolated places. And I like being able to leave my house when it snows. That's cool. Lowkey, I think this car also has crank windows. Everyone likes crank windows, especially girls.²

It also lacks a number of features many cars have. It has no seat warmers, I hate making my ass warm while the rest of me is cold. Part of me strongly resents paying for the privilege. It also has no screen, cars were not meant to have screens. I have literally never once wanted or needed to use a screen in a car; there is instead a convenient place for me to stick my phone, and I can use that as a GPS. There is a bluetooth connectable speaker, such that one may listen to audiobooks and music. But there is no screen, why on Earth would there be a screen? If we must have a backup camera, there will be a newfangled technology which displays it in one corner of the rear view mirror. Or maybe those things you can pull down to block the sun. One or the other. As a corollary, there is no radio. No one has used a radio since the Spring of 1975.

The air conditioning knobs will also old-fashioned -- just take them straight from a 2007 Dodge NITRO. We used to be a country. Certainly, there are no bright LED headlights. I have long been a victim of LED headlights. And, in my fantasy, I never become a perpetrator. But, there is a single comically bright light on the top of hood, and one is intended to use it as a defensive weapon. In thirty years, this car will be self-driving. Yet, now, that is too wonderful even for my fantasy.