The scene: The North American International Auto Show. The players: your favourite intrepid reporter, microphone in hand, and an auto worker, dressed in greasy coveralls.

CC: Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of Soft Copy, your local investigative reporting show. We’re here today in Detroit with Stan Havewrench, who works for one of the big three auto companies. Stan, can you tell us why you’re here today?

STAN: Personally, I come to see all the scantily clad women at the exhibits. 

CC: Right. Ahem. Okay, so what’s the official reason for your presence?

STAN: Oh. Well, the company sent me as an employee representative. This is so attendees know that their cars are “crafted with pride” by actual, live, overtired human beings, rather than those dumb ol’ cheap,  efficient, and mistake-free robots.

CC: I see. So can you tell me what the purpose of the Show is?

STAN: Well, the basic purpose of the show is to wow everyone with sleek, colourful, futuristic gadget-filled concept cars that you would kill for,  but that we never actually put on the market.

CC: Why not?

STAN: Because it’s cheaper to make and sell our basic box-on-four-wheels model.

CC: Then… why bother showing anybody this stuff?

STAN: So that when you come to the car lot, you have visions of sleek, colourful, futuristic, gadget-filled concept cars in your head. This way we can charge you three times your yearly salary for our basic box-on-four-wheels model. Or more, if you want some of the options.

CC: What options?

STAN: The engine, the steering wheel, automatic transmission . . .

CC: Those aren’t options! You don’t have a car if you don’t have those items!

STAN: Look, we include the plastic cupholders for free, what more do you want??

CC: Okay, okay. Look, can you tell me anything about the history of the car?

STAN: Gee, I dunno. I guess some guy got sick of feeding Norman and decided to come up with a better way to travel. 

CC: Norman?

STAN: His horse.

CC. Got it. Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: rather than feed a horse, we now choose to spend upwards of $35,000 to buy 3000 pounds of plastic, metal and rubber to transport approximately 200 pounds of human from point A to point B. Plus, we rip up the ground by the acre to extract large amounts of flammable black goo. We process it, pour it into our cars as fuel, and it comes out the other end as airborne mess. And in order to drive these things, we process a different kind of muck, make it hard, and smelly, and reflective, and pour it over thousands of miles of land to make roads.

STAN: Sounds about right.

CC: Yes, but don’t you think that’s a bit ridiculous?

STAN: It gets you to point B faster than the horse, doesn’t it?

CC: You tried driving in rush hour lately? Turtles can go faster.

STAN: Plus you wouldn’t want to deal with people on public transit.

CC: About that: traffic is so bad that people are going nuts on the highways. Have you ever heard of road rage?

STAN: No, definitely not.

CC: People get crazy frustrated with traffic jams. There was once a case in Salt Lake City, where a 75‑year‑old—annoyed that 41‑year‑old honked at him for blocking traffic—followed the younger guy. When he pulled off the road, hurled his prescription bottle at him, and then smashed the younger guy’s knees with his ’92 Mercury. And then there are car jackings, police chases, traffic accidents…

STAN: But the freedom, man. The freedom to go wherever you want.

CC: The freedom to spend hours of every day stuck in a commute. Look can we at least agree that cars need to be much more environmentally friendly if we’re going to drive them?

STAN: No.

CC: No?!

STAN: That’s commie thinking, there kid. Clean air and drinkable water is for pinkos. And uh, something something energy independence. Also, erm, rah rah gasoline! Down with cheap electricity from renewable energy infrastructure. Boo.

CC: Something something?

STAN: I may have forgotten what the company memo told me to say. Look, lady, the CEO’s personal stock portfolio is heavily into oil and gas stocks. Cut me some slack. I got kids to feed.

CC: And there you have it folks. Straight from the horse’s, no, the car’s, sorry, the CEO’s mouth.

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