Despite what my dentist keeps telling me, I’m human. Aside from having a bunch of hair and fingers, that means that I do, sometimes, make mistakes. And I’ve made plenty this year. So I want to make things right. Here’s my corrections for the ten biggest mistakes I’ve made this year:
1. There is no such car as a ‘Ford Meatus.’
2. Kegel exercises have little to no effect on gas mileage.
3. The ‘heel-and-toe’ driving method does not require any special tongue or lower jaw positioning.
4. Octane in gasoline can not be determined by “a quick taste,” as the quote suggests. The expert quoted, Dr. Malcom Towbridge, was later determined to be a ventriloquists’ dummy connected to a speakerphone.
5. A Saturn SC1 is not 2015’s “best value.” The car is no longer produced, and was never best anything.
6. Takata airbags are not, and never were, filled with fresh, rich sour cream.
7. Manual shift patterns will not be “changing when America succumbs to the cruelty of the Metric System,” as I claimed. Shift patterns are not affected by units of measurement, and the US has no current plans to switch to the Metric System.
8. The first car was not invented in 1312 by a monk whose sexual pre-occupation with horses prevented him from getting behind one. That first car was also not powered by a “potent elixir made from paraffin and sparrow ejaculate.”
9. The Tesla Model S is not powered by “a quantum singularity held in a magnetic containment field.” That was misread from an article about Romulan Warbirds, a fictitious spacecraft. Relatedly, the later statement in the article that suggested any wreck between two Model Ses could “end the universe as we know it” is an exaggeration.
10. Patrick George is an American citizen, and has never been involved in any revolutionary activities or associated with any neo-Fascist organizations in Guam, or any U.S. Territory. I apologize for the inconvenience caused by the interrogations.
11. I have not been appointed to the Presidential Task Force on Turn Indication and Light-Based Automotive Communications. Such a task force does not exist.
12. An F1 driver cannot immediately win any race by answering three riddles from a magic, talking intake manifold. The report I cited in the article turns out to have been a hallucination.
13. “Several pulverized burritos” are not an “adequate replacement” for motor oil.
14. The makers of windshield wiper blades are not part of a “huge, world-strangling conspiracy” run by “the Amish and their cronies at Big Rain.” I apologize for any inconvenience caused by the riots and barn-burnings.
15. This list was only supposed to have ten (10) entries.
So, again, I’m really sorry about all that. Here’s to a better 2016!
Contact the author at jason@jalopnik.com.