There's a certain point where our collective understanding of manliness coincides with our hard-earned stripes as true car enthusiasts. We may not all wear unbuttoned shirts to proudly expose our medallion-adorned chest wigs, loafers without socks, mirrored aviators, string back gloves and trucker caps, but our subconscious selfs do. That's why, when someone manages to violate the unwritten laws of both manhood and enthusiasm in a single blow we feel it so deeply and so personally. It's a burden we must all bear as guardians of the secret.
One of those times came earlier today when news arrived that the only car to be traded in under GM's 60-day money back guarantee was a manual transmission Corvette. Not because the male customer was somehow dissatisfied withe the Vette's performance, quality or reliability, but because rowing his own gears made his ovaries hurt. He traded the car in for an auto.
Van Sarockin summed up the collective outrage perfectly, saying,
There ought to be a ceremony, like in the French Foreign Legion, where they roll the drums, then knock off your crossed-flags baseball cap, strip off your string-back driving gloves, and make you turn in you driving shoes, for these sorts of unforgivable driving offenses.
At least he didn't trade it for an old Celebrity.
That that last bit, we'd argue that the Celebrity would have been preferential to the slushbox Corvette. The former is simply embarrassing, the latter represents everything that's wrong with this fine country of ours.