A Car for Women by Women!

wu-huh?

Wow, being invited over by a mechanic. *swoon*

Gull doors?! Guys want gull doors too.

gross xpost

I mean, my elbow NEVER itches.

Is this the glovebox?

Pads.

Cenrefold from 'wide-open gloveboxes.com'

I think the lady designers were imported from the 50s. In nice clean white labcoats, foxy librarian specs and lovely high heels.

OTOH yeah the doors are awesome.

jeez, this sounds so stupid, and i'm from a pro-volvo family. guess that's what happens when you sell out to the americans...

(Jesus Christ. I have never read anything so fucking patronising in my life. Okay, I couldn't jump start a car, but if I could drive I'd bloody well learn how to. Seat coves to match your outfit? Who's this for? Fucking Barbie?)

gah. Volvos are already expensive enough to fix, my mom had one.

May I suggest cutting your head off?

BTW this line makes me think that all the men at Volvo are behind closed doors with cigars and brandies, and chuckling mightily at how "cute" the "little ladies" are. This whole story really is like '50s science.

However, this thread demonstrates that Liz :x thoroughly deserves more mentions in the funniest poster thread.

(p.s. how about they make cars which have bonnets that DO open but with the washer filler thingy outside the bonnet?)

Back in the 1950s a U.S. car company decided to market a car specifically to women...by painting it pink and including a matching handbag.

what happened ?

I can't believe the thread got this big before someone mentioned the Chrysler LaFemme! It was designed by a man, though. They originally were supposed to come with not just a handbag, but an umbrella and rainboots to match. I saw one once--the inside looked like a tissue box and it had a push-button automatic transmission.

It was much cooler than this new crap.

(hey mark!)

Any real gurl car has to not only be pink but trimmed with lace. Plus, it's gotta have curtains. I know this to be true because the cartoons told me so.

http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Mar/2004332263523235265799.jpg

Well, the Sun's item led with the new car's most patronizing feature (curiously missing from the BBC's coverage) "And yes it HAS got a computer to help park it!"

There is depressingly little online about the "Docker Daimlers", fifties show cars designed by Daimler ceo Lord Docker's wife. I think there were 6 made before he got the hoof for bringing the company into disrepute. The had such features as gold instead of chrome plating, zebra-skin upholstery, ivory or rosewood, instead of walnut door cappings and dashboard etc. they were regarded as being so appalingly vulgar by the gentry that daimler lost their royal patronage, & the windsors switched to rolls-royce instead. Of course I think they were l33t.

The Volvo looks quite nice to me, it certainly looks about 1000 x better than the stupid fucking tt anyway. If I had money, I'd possibly buy one, to carry my daisy rock guitar to gigs in, plus, I'd have the seats reupholstered in zebra skin etc. Of course I'm missing the point a little here aren't I.

re: women drivers, the last time I was in DC the cab driver taking me to Union Station was displeased at the driving of another person, who couldn't park to save their lives, and he was like "Honey! Move!" which I thought nothing of until we passed and saw it was a male and he was like, "Shit! That ain't no honey! Only honeys go driving like that, what's that boy doing!" and I just started laughing my ass off. I mean who am I to call him sexist, my only driving experiences ended with me putting my mom in a ditch pretty much!

I, for instance, have no clue what to do with jump leads and would welcome a car with seats that matched my outfit, and I'm quite happy for those things to be assigned the cultural status of 'feminine' on strict condition that that doesn't imply only biological women. We can all be a bit of a woman-at-heart sometimes, can't we?

I have this vision of Momus leading a thousand-breast army, all driving Volvos, to the Democratic convention.

I mean, cars are just like that, right? All bottled up, y'know. They keep things to themselves. I'm sure everything is OK. Really. If the car was letting somebody else drive it, it would tell me, I know. Really, I'm just silly for even thinking such things. That's just the kind of car it is--sort of quiet and shy. That's what I like about it. Everything is fine. Really, I'm sure. Right?

(NB: If "ponce" is actually way more insulting than I think it is, I apologize for the above joke.)

One step away from DOILIES! And where are the coasters? And the bowl of ancient hard candy? OH AND SHOULDN'T THERE BE A CAT?

I've just pitched an article on this subject to the AIGA Journal and gotten the thumbs up. And since I'll be in Stockholm over the weekend I'm going to make serious efforts to see a prototype of the vulva-Volvo and perhaps even get some Volvo people's views on whether consumer society progresses in the direction of the feminine (and whether God was wrong to smite Sodom for being effete).

And I'm from the a throwback to the 1950's, too! (rolling eyes) Please....

I can do that too, Momus, it would involve turning on my webcam, taking off my shirt, and putting a link on this thread. I bet you actually had to do a little work though! Ha ha!

I'd be more surprised if you could get them to admit they know what effete actually means. Most likely, they would lock you out of seeing the prototype, for fear of confirming how crap and impractical the model actually is.

(xpost)

Dan I think you have just found your calling in life.

SODOM AND GOMORRAH - THE LAST SEVEN DAYS 1974 [B+] Biblical porno epic from The Mitchell Brothers. Spending almost a million bucks on the production, the bad boy brothers thought they'd they had a sure fire hit but the flick flopped at the box office.
.

Scratch that, too young to be smitten.

What, because I'm saying that Lot knew the homo rabble weren't going to take him up on his bad-parenting suggestion that his daughters might slake their lusts? The rest is just me saying what the Bible says, then adding that God is wrong. Friendly, perhaps, but not conservative-Christian-friendly.

(xpost I really misremembered this story because I thought that the daughters got superboned by the horny horde.)

And that's what a conservative Christian reading means. Christianity preserved the Old Testament through the Septuagint, but discarded the commentaries in the Talmuds and other material, which often has the effect of handing someone a picture book in which you've scratched out all the words. Liberal Christians tend to refer back to those Jewish readings of originally Jewish material when they interpret it, since only a conservative minority (one currently growing, but smaller than it's been) of Christians believes the Bible can or should be understood in a vacuum.

It's common to read the story as a contrast to Abraham's own reception of divine messengers, and Sodom's sin is often labeled as greed or a lack of hospitality, but above all else, it's meant to be understood that Sodom was sentenced to destruction before the angels got there, not in response to how they're treated: that's why they're there to begin with.

(xpost: er, what Tep said.)

And calling the men of Sodom 'gay' and assuming that they wouldn't be interested in women - which they don't say, what they say is 'you're only a visitor here yourself, and now you're trying to judge us?' - sounds horribly anachronistic. There's no way of knowing what the social ideas surrounding same-sex relations were at the time, and for most of Western history the binary straight-gay divide was not assumed to exist, cf Roman poets writing love poems to members of both sexes, the pre-nineteenth-century idea that 'sodomy' related to the act rather than to the person.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/familyfundamentals/i/sf_chapter_carr9090.jpg

(You can sort of see that in Carr's comments, too; it sounds like he's aware of the translation issues involved without 'correcting' them.)

Anyway, though, you were saying ... about rape being effete and feminine?

If that's an accusation of nihilism directed my way, I'd direct you to an interview I just did for webzine Terror Tales for their 'Fuck Horror' issue where I suggest that the refusal of transcendence, as seen in Japan and the philosophy of people like Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami and the Chapman Brothers, can itself be a sort of transcendence, or at least a bulwark against nihilism.

It's the two paragraphs starting with:

'The 'Celtic Tragedy Disco' song that repelled you is, in some ways, part of an effort to discredit homophobes, metaphysicians, Christians and humanists...'

and ending with

'...So maybe this relativism can be a sort of religion. Maybe Warhol's 'philosophy' and Murakami's and even the Chapman Brothers', with their refusals of transcendence, can be bulwarks against nihilism.'

(Not against pomposity or verbosity, though, clearly!)

http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/7115/henchx13.gif

"Pull up to the bumper, baby!"

(i just laughed so hard at that, thanks) (your post, not mine) (yes, i've been drinking)

I really think you should apologize to Ned for this view, otherwise you're being a bit of a Bazarov yourself, Allyzay.

Fo' shizzle! My people, my people!

And calling the men of Sodom 'gay' and assuming that they wouldn't be interested in women - which they don't say, what they say is 'you're only a visitor here yourself, and now you're trying to judge us?' - sounds horribly anachronistic. There's no way of knowing what the social ideas surrounding same-sex relations were at the time, and for most of Western history the binary straight-gay divide was not assumed to exist, cf Roman poets writing love poems to members of both sexes, the pre-nineteenth-century idea that 'sodomy' related to the act rather than to the person.

Momus: At a certain point, when you've stretched over backwards, twisted around your own ankles and looped three times through your legs to prove that etiquette from thousands of years ago can still be relevant to life today, it's best just to pull yourself together, straighten up, dust yourself down, and say 'Ah fuck it, I might as well buy a Vagi-Volvo and become a druid.'

You see, I can't help but feel that this kind of response is symptomatic of a deep-seated political, intellectual and cultural conservatism. When one ideological combatant is faced with an argument he doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand, or simply lacks the intellectual rigour or background knowledge to form an counter-argument, he resorts to mockery, sarcasm or crude humour in order to deflect attention from his failings.

I can't help be reminded of the kneejerk dismissal of your average boorish British male when faced with a Pollock or a Rothko, or a beautiful Takashi Murakami piece - because it lies so far outside the realms of comprehension, the subject is compelled to ridicule. It is the symbol of everything that is wrong with British society today, and in protest I shall move to Berlin forthwith.

Don't women get enough of this attitude from their boyfriends?

Well, I went to Stockholm and stopped by Volvo HQ to get more info on the Your Concept Car for my article for AIGA Voice. They didn't have the prototype there, since it's still out at the motor show. But we got to talking and the long and short of it is, they want to do an MCC for next year's show: a Momus Concept Car. It's going to be zero emission and basically the idea is it doesn't harm the environment or endanger pedestrians because it doesn't go anywhere. You 'travel' through information instead of through space. It's going to be about the size of a coffee table book, and have a keyboard instead of a dashboard and an LCD screen instead of a windscreen. I can't say any more right now, top secret.