#ford grenada

[pimpseries]

[seat-safety-switch]

Unless you’ve been living under some kind of a rock, you’ve probably heard of those little newfangled doohickies your insurance company makes you plug into your car’s OBD2 port. Its purpose? Only the most American activity of all, tattling on your habits to big business.

When I was first told of this, I wanted to drop my insurer. After all, they get a little snippy when I do my weekly conference calls with them to get them to remove all the hoopties I sold or scrapped and add all the new hoopties onto my policy. Then came the “D-word:” discount. Keeping my money and having an exterior source of validation that I was in fact a Good Driver? Sign me the fuck up.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t work all that well. On my first trip, the little bastard beeped and chirped at me about how aggressively I braked. I don’t like brakes either, but it was either that or run over a child on the sidewalk I was driving on while texting, and the insurance company would have to pay out for that so what’s their fucking problem? The solution, therefore, was to give it a new baseline for the kind of driving I like to do.

After a few hours of bodging an OBD2 port onto my ‘76 Grenada, it was finally working. As I merged onto the highway and boost began to build, I hit the gang-fired bottles of nitrous and the supercharger did its best impression of a mouthwash commercial. My vision narrowed to a single pinprick, which I immediately focused on the blinking lights of The Snitch. Nagging began to pour out of it in a torrent, concerned about my road speed, rapid lane changes, tailgating, and the alarming amount of waggle coming from the eleven-hundred-horsepower grunt pushing around the rear end. I paid it no mind, and smiled as I did a ninety-degree turn at speed into the parking lot of a truck stop, where I then cracked off a set of donuts that would have made a figure skater shit their own dick off in jealousy.

By now, the little box had begun to overheat. I could smell the faint yet delicious woodsy aroma of burning capacitors. Its rage for my driving had been stoked so well that I could now hear the delightful sound of traces pulling free from its logic bard. I got a call from my insurance agent, and I punched the Bluetooth speaker zip-tied to the roll cage to answer it.

“STOP! STOP IT! YOU’RE KILLING HIM!” she shrieked. The only reply I had for her was a sadistic top-fuel exhaust cackle, followed by one of my own.

At long last, there was a short burst of staticky synthesized voice, and then all was quiet except for the crackling of roast electronics. I think its last words were “I’m sorry.”

I wish I could say that was the only fire I had in my footwell that morning, but let’s be honest with ourselves. I’m no good at soldering. Too many people judge you.