Vision is a tremendous help when piloting a car, which is why so many cars employ that big window right above the steering wheel. Our readers not held captive in subterranean research labs with 24/7 fluorescent lighting can tell you that night really restricts vision, and we normally remedy this with headlights. But what if you can’t run your lights, and it’s pitch black out? Can you still drive? The answer is yes, if you have money. Or an army.
Recently, Chevy decided to show off their new “Midnight Edition” Tahoes, which are Tahoes with as much blacked out as possible, including the bowtie badge and wheels, by taking a bunch of journalists somewhere, at night, in total darkness.
Because the best way to experience an all-black car is in the absolute black of night. Here’s a picture I snapped of the Midnight edition in this very fitting context:
Yes, yes, it’s quite stunning.
While all this is technically true, I’m just screwing around a bit. Really, Chevy arranged for a clutch of soft, pliant autojournalists to be taken to The Range Complex, a training center founded by ex-Delta Force members.
Mil-spec Tahoes are used by Delta Force for certain operations, and one of the things that’s routinely done with these Tahoes is driving them in pitch blackness, with no lights at all.
The way this is accomplished is with alarmingly expensive night-vision goggles, which, against everyone’s better judgement, they fitted to my head and let me use to drive such a Tahoe in the deep, unforgiving dark.
Some very friendly and secretly very dangerous ex-Delta Force guys showed me how to drive when your vision is reduced to a green-tinted circle, and also showed me how to do things I very rarely do, like shoot huge, powerful sniper rifles into targets very, very far away.
I’m still amazed that they let me anywhere with $30 grand worth of expensive optics strapped to my head. Most people won’t even let me hold their phones.