Burnout At Lowe's

Whenever possible I park my car in the far and lonely ends of parking lots avoiding I hope, dents and dings from other parkers swinging the doors of their cars open and into mine. And so a few days ago I was sitting in my car in a remote corner of the lot at Lowe’s talking on the phone with R. Interesting things happen in these hinterlands.

Mid-conversation I noticed a gathering of a few young men and one young woman around a jazzed up Hyundai Genesis coupe. A couple of the men were wearing red Lowe’s employee vests. The car was lowered, had bright chrome oversized wheels and a carbon fiber hood. Up went the hood. They all loomed around admiring the engine, the hood was perforated with a multitude of scoops and louvres the better to feed cool air to the raging beast within and exhaust the waste heat from all those horses.

With the hood still up one fellow got in the car and started the engine and revved it up and up. No load is the worst load and the engine was screaming. This is why it’s usually not a great idea to buy a used car with lots of modifications from a youthful seller. Respecting the machine is not high on the to-do list. With the onlookers sufficiently impressed, the hood went down and the driver slowly rolled the car out of the space it was parked in pointing it in the direction of open pavement. He then put one foot on the brake and the other on the gas and floored it.

Control modules for the ABS must have experienced instant migranes and I completely lost track of what R and I were talking about. The rear tires started to spin and spin faster and faster and clouds of acrid blue-grey smoke billowed in the air. The onlookers hooted and waved their arms in approval and the car made its way slowly with wheels spinning and when they finally gained traction, it took off across the lot like a rocket. When the smoke cleared, two long thick stripes of rubber, black and crumbly, equaling about five thousand miles of normal tire wear remained on the pavement.

Gee-whiz! Thirty five years ago the cars were different - big heavy lumps of American iron - but I remember doing the same thing, and what ridiculous fun it was. And still is.

Gordon Bunker