The Sum of All Fears

"deprecated account" (savethei4s)
11/26/2015 at 11:30 • Filed to: None

This build’s true inception dates back to the year 2014 if only as a figment of my imagination, but Toyota’s infamous “Beigeghazi” scandal back in ’23 shook me back to my senses. If the BOLD NEW CAMRY! ® was, as indignant customers had claimed, not bold enough, then I had to act, and I had to act fast. Oh, they’d be thinking “bold” when I was done.

It had now been a turmoil-filled four years since the debacle, and I was ready to get started. I had secured the donor car two years prior, after months of Craigslist scouring and the occasional venture into the Dark Web. My hard searching had paid off, though. It was an immaculate 1990 Miata. It had just over a hundred thousand miles on it, and it was finished in gleaming Crystal White. Of course, none of that would matter when it was all said and done.

However, two failed Kickstarter campaigns and an online kidney auction later, I was beginning to lose hope. Serendipitously, an email from Prince Kijiji of Nigeria found its way into my inbox. He offered me the deal of a lifetime: he’d provide an endless stream of money for the build, so long as he got to drive the finished product once a month. He asked for a good-faith payment of $5,000, which I happily forked over, and to prove his good faith to me, he sent me a 1TB hard drive full of detailed pictures of his exceedingly eccentric car collection. EJ25-swapped rally Twingos, a stanced Matra Bagheera, and an entire fleet of Volvo P1800S utes - this guy was was into some freaky stuff. And so was I.

I set to work at once. A quick visit to eBay yielded a gently used LML Duramax V8 out of an old Silverado HD, and a Japanese Amazon search snagged me a ridiculously expensive carbon fiber loom. Now for the dirty work. The Duramax arrived in a few days, along with the first few boxes of loom parts. After another three months, the loom was assembled and ready for action. With the bespoke panels’ shapes programmed into the loom, the only thing left to do was wait. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait for long.

The next day, the old Miata was stripped of its pristine white panels and fitted with the newly formed exterior. If Jujiro Matsuda could have seen the result, he would have demanded a shooting brake Miata from the factory. The fenders had been significantly widened to accommodate the venerable LML, but that old diesel masterpiece was a wholly different issue. I’d neglected to buy a transmission to go along with it, so naturally, I did what any reasonable human being with a Nigerian prince’s cash flow would do.

The gargantuan Haas CNC five-axis mill arrived at my doorstep two days later and free of shipping charges. The hundred or so heavy-duty shipping drones were struggling under its immense weight. I set it up in the workshop, and few quick inputs, calculations, and calibrations later, the mill was ready the make the one-of-a-kind 6-speed manual that would handle the V8’s impressive torque. After a day of milling, two of sanding, and another two of polishing, the engine and transmission were mated and in the Miata. Soon, it would be off to the paint shop. I fired her up for the first time, and my vision started to blur. The black smoke was so powerful it could make a grown Passat TDI owner cry, and the sound of the Duramax’s angry idle through the side pipes could make any stancebro cower in fear. The car couldn’t move into the paint booth under its own power due to the thick black smoke, so I carefully rolled it in and grabbed a sizable cup gun loaded with 3 quarts of BMW Ipanemabraun Metallisch. Time to go to work.

Three coats later, and the carbon fiber bodywork now had a glorious earthy brown hue to it. The only thing left to do was get the beast inspected and declared roadworthy, legally speaking. In reality, the roads ought to have been inspected and declared worthy of this beautiful monstrosity. Almost fourteen years of dreaming, building, and shady ethics had led to this. I opened the split tailgate and topped off the nitrous tank before peeling out of the driveway and heading to the inspection station.

As I approached the gray-veneered counter, a vaguely familiar face peered at me from behind a computer screen. “You number 420?” asked the man. “Yep, that’s me.” I replied. “Okay, so you’re here for a roadworthiness inspection of a, uh-” he paused. “- 1990 Mazda Miata?” “Yeah, that’s it,” I said. As he continued pecking away at the keyboard, his face began to look more and more familiar to me. I glanced down at his name tag. It read “HARDIGREE”. His bespectacled visage squinting at the screen, he peered back up at me, confused. “Uh, it says here that you listed the body type as ‘wagon.’ You sure you didn’t make a mistake there?” “Well,” I replied “technically, it’s a shooting brake, but that wasn’t an option, so I figured I’d just say wagon.” “Ah, gotcha,” he said warily. It was then that it all clicked. “Wait! Matt? Hardibro? Is that you?!?” I asked incredulously. “It’s been a long time since someone’s called me that,” he answered, his small frame lifting itself out of the poorly upholstered, government issue office chair.

“Wha- What happened to you dude? Why are you working at the DMV in Memphis?” He grimaced. “Let me guess, Kinja became self-aware,” I offered. He shushed me and glanced around the waiting area in a paranoid fashion. “No, but it came close. I’ll tell you more on the inspection drive,” he said. “Well,” I said, “ the noise may be a slight problem.”

As we walked out to the car, Matt explained that Gawker had decided that Jalopnik would be the testbed blog for Kinja v6.9, and that the new version had then become partially self-aware and had to be cocooned in a corner of the Dark Web, and had been shut down covertly soon after. All the writers had been given very healthy severance packages, but most, including Matt himself, had sunk it all in doomed project cars. Now here he was, an attendant at the Tennessee Department of Motor Vehicles’s Summer Avenue Inspection Station.

When he first saw the car, he began to turn as green as a 2009 Ford Fiesta. “Uh, you know we don’t have to actually do this,” he said. “Aw, come on, Hardibro. It’ll be fun,” I jibed. “Okay, okay,” he said nervously, the smile on his face quivering. As soon as I hit the enormous red START button, any illusion of civility disappeared and Matt’s standard-issue gray pants instantly became the same brown shade as the Miata’s paintwork. The two sequential 88mm turbos spooled up as we pulled onto Summer. I kept it under 85 until we got on the interstate, with Matt sweating buckets the whole time. My foresight regarding the drain plugs in the floor would prove handy. As we entered I-240, I floored it. The result was amounts of black smoke that the world hadn’t seen since the Gulf War.

Twenty tearful minutes later, we pulled back into the inspection station, nitrous purge hissing away. I helped Matt get his sweat-and-tear-soaked body out of the car and went inside with him. He retrieved his clipboard and shakily scrawled on the registration with all the skill of a kindergartner, “roadworthy.” He continued to tremble as I smiled and walked out of the waiting area. As I hollered goodbye, all he could manage was a feeble raise of the hand. It was done.

I wanted to pop into the old Porsche shop down the street and show off my masterpiece, but I figured it was time to head back home, especially since I needed some sleep before the autocross tomorrow. Since Matt was too traumatized to ever speak of the incident, there would be no sign of my presence other than the four 355-section streaks of smoldering Pirelli P Zero Corsa that went on for a few miles beyond the DMV driveway. I turned on the pop-up headlights and slammed the miniature likeness of Travis Okulski’s head into first gear. As I fishtailed the old NA out of the parking lot like Jeff Gordon in a Caprice taxi, the words of Mr. Regular echoed in my head: “you passed the test like all the rest!” Good ole Prince Kijiji would be proud.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by Seat Safety Switch and Tohru. Keep up the great work, y’all.

DISCUSSION (13)

Hot Takes Salesman > deprecated account
11/25/2015 at 20:49

“A paramount vision of a dark future in the style of Bradbury and Orwell”

-The New York Times Book Review

‘27/10”

-Some asshole

Buy The Brown Miata today wherever good books are sold

deprecated account > Hot Takes Salesman
11/25/2015 at 20:51

“‘27/10’ - Some Asshole” Hahahahaha this is too good

Hot Takes Salesman > deprecated account
11/25/2015 at 21:03

My comedy routine will be fucking amazing

“And here is James, who’s sharp wit and biting critiques formed on the rough streets of Internet forums and a high school whos primary demographics were douchebags and slutty white girls, a true comedic master of our time”

deprecated account > Hot Takes Salesman
11/25/2015 at 21:04

Aw yeah man I’d pay to see that!

Hot Takes Salesman > deprecated account
11/25/2015 at 21:10

“And this guy is talking and talking, and I say,

‘Ur mom’”

*audience dies*

Kinja'd!!!

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > deprecated account
11/25/2015 at 21:11

The story makes too much sense and actually comes to a conclusion, so it’s nothing like a seatsafetyswitch story.

deprecated account > Hot Takes Salesman
11/25/2015 at 21:12

/*drops mic*

//*explodes*

///*ba dum tsss*

deprecated account > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer
11/25/2015 at 21:12

I KNEW IT WAS MISSING SOMETHING!!!

unclevanos (Ovaltine Jenkins) > deprecated account
11/26/2015 at 00:33

11/10 - “Its like Skyrim with books” - Machinima

“My whole life changed after reading this book, I no longer use my parent’s trust fund to write my reviews and live in Brooklyn.” - I.P. Freely Vice Magazine

Noah - Now with more boost. > deprecated account
11/26/2015 at 11:55

“Such elegant prose hath ne’er graced Oppo.” - Shakespeare

“Fee Fi Fo Fum.” - A Giant

“We loved Save the V8’s advertising revenue book, so we struggle to find anything negative to say about his work. - IGN

deprecated account > Noah - Now with more boost.
11/26/2015 at 11:56

9.5/10?

Noah - Now with more boost. > deprecated account
11/26/2015 at 12:04

Sounds reasonable. We’ll toss you a 9.5/10 if you add another $5000 to that check. Good publicity is expensive. - IGN

deprecated account > Noah - Now with more boost.
11/26/2015 at 12:33

I'll talk to the Prince and see if he can spare me anything.