Unconsumption Fantasy
I ran across a sweet old Pontiac in San Diego last week emblazoned with a hipster font claiming, “Cars for a grand.com”
Upon laying eyes on this car, I immediately began concocting a fantasy. In my head, “Cars for a grand.com” was an underground movement, inspired by Unconsumption, fueled by a bunch of DIYers fixing up old cars on the cheap, retrofitting them to run on bio-diesel, defiantly getting classic old models back on the road. Cars from back when they knew how to design cars. Take that Toyota, and your sticky pedals. Screw you GM – we’re still sore about you flying private jets to the bail-out hearings in Washington. “Cars for a grand.com,” I rhapsodized internally, was driven by a mission to rescue still-functional, bad-ass vehicles from the junkyard while also providing responsible and flexible transportation, and giving the public a little visual stimulation on the highways and byways along the way. All for a grand!
Alas, it turns out “Cars for a grand.com” is a site mainly aggregating listings for reserve auctions on ebay, for vehicles that will likely sell for much more than a grand, or non-functioning vehicles being sold for parts. Yawn. At least they provided a bit of inspiration for a large-scale Unconsumption project, if only for a fleeting moment.