Who likes facts? Car ownership facts? Everyone. But you know what’s even better than facts? Facts that aren’t exactly true! I just like writing these, so, you know, enjoy. See how many you can pass along until you hear them repeated back to you!
1. After insurance and fuel, a car-owners largest outlay of money is for coolant. A 2015 study found the average car owner spends over $1600/year on coolant.
2. As a form of protest, an Oldsmobile Alero was elected mayor of Swampy Folds, Oklahoma in 2002. After only seven months the car was forced to resign under allegations that it fondled an intern.
3. Henry Ford opened his first Model T assembly line on December 1, 1913 by slaughtering a horse. He bathed in the horse’s blood, and used the blood to ‘baptize’ the assembly line. This symbolic act has been secretly reenacted on the opening of every Ford assembly line since.
4. Utah is the only state where defecating in your own car is a felony.
5. Alec Issigonis’ original sketches of the now-famous Mini included a dash-mounted radiator overflow tank that doubled as a hot-water dispenser for tea. It was cut for cost reasons.
6. Forensic scientists can tell what kind of car a person drove last by a combination of ankle bone wear and laser buttock-indendation scanning.
7. As of this writing, only 4% of car owners in the US regularly change their inner-seat filters at the intervals suggested by the manufacturer.
8. By 2020, all cars in China will be required to have lilac indicator lights instead of amber indicator lights, as the color lilac in China is traditionally associated with the process of changing direction, like the flower.
9. The first perfume designed specifically to smell like a car, Gremlin for Her, was introduced to the market on Valentine’s Day 1977.
10. The most popular terms for cars in American slang (according to Northwestern University) in 2016 are smudgewagon, meatslider, and plizzle. These terms have replaced 2015's shudderbox, longoo, and wheel’d-luge.