The year is 2024. Eighteen months ago, in September of 2022, aliens from Proxima Centauri landed on earth and began making some changes for us pitiful lifeforms incapable of interstellar travel. The oceans are cleaned up, war and weapons are gone, but they still have one issue with Earth that they can’t quite resolve: There are just too dang many car brands.
See, the Centaurians want us to achieve the same faster-than-light travel they used to come here and meet us, but they need help from our engineers to make it work (the biological differences at play are, in short, staggering and a little disconcerting). They need to pull those engineers from some of our Terran automakers, but they’re having a hard time parsing which brands can spare the brainpower. So, dear reader, they’ve turned to you.
That’s right. You, Earth’s new Most Hallowed Royal Consul of the Automobile, must decide which car brand is to be sacrificed at the altar of interstellar travel. The power to immediately end a company, with no harmful repercussions to those employed by that company (Centaurian severance packages are pretty spectacular) lies solely in your hands. What do you pick?
As your most trusted advisor (we’re really good friends in the future), I have some suggestions. First on the list is Vauxhall, noted purveyor of adorable little British police cars. Sure, the company may have history, but it’s also a badge-engineering exercise targeted exclusively at a single country — not exactly the most necessary automaker of all time, especially now that it’s part of the massive Stellantis conglomerate. How many luxury-ish European car brands do you really need under one roof?
That’s just my suggestion, however. You’re the one to whom the Centaurians granted this power, and this duty, and it’s your shoulders upon which this decision must rest. So tell me: Which automaker gets traded for the opportunity to live among the stars?