The Pains of Consuming

I've done it again. Gone and killed another of my favorite products. Merely by enjoying them, it seems I consign them to some sort of consumer products death sentence, where like Stalin's political enemies they disappear and are never seen again.

According to several news reports, it's not hard to do. Products are coming and going in unprecedented numbers. And just about anything affects it. Corporate mergers. Supply chain issues. Sales. Executive whims. Pandemics.

As a guy with a few kinks in his tastebuds (I detest seafood and poultry, for example) I don't expect to find an endless array of foodstuffs that appeal to me. But when my tastebuds find themselves in the mainstream, I kind of hope things will stick around for a while.

Take Knorr Foods One Skillet dinners. Just last year, I discovered the Steak, Pepper, Brown Rice and Quinoa variety. And the Moroccan-Style Chicken with Barley, which asked only that the preparer add carrots and raisins. (Okay, I admit it—the latter is a little exotic. And if you're wondering, I substituted the chicken with pork.)

But they were amazing! I mean, restaurant-quality food from my kitchen? Are you serious?

But there they were.

Yes, there was some prep required. With the former, one red and one green pepper needed to be sliced, along with a pound and a half of good beef (I used London broil). With the latter, the pork had to be similarly prepped, along with the carrots.

No big deal.

Then each ingredient had to be cooked separately, with each one picking up traces of the item cooked previously. Finally, there was a grand re-combining. Let stand for a couple of minutes and they were ready to go.

I consumed them like someone who hadn't eaten for weeks. Leftovers existed only theoretically.

After several months of One Skillet nirvana, I began to notice one of two things when I went to re-stock: they were either gone (along with their shelf IDs), or they were on sale—the clearance kind.

It being the year of COVID, so much could have gone wrong.

And yet on the other hand, with so many people spending so much time at home, I would have thought a product like this, which required only a few, easy to find additions and yielded a restaurant-quality dinner in return would have been wildly popular.

I was wrong.

But I'll never know for sure. Responses from Knorr were vague and never confirmed the status of these products. But their continued absence from the corporate web site and store shelves doesn't paint a bright picture.

Even on the inedible side of the marketplace favorites disappear.

If you can find it, take my all-time favorite car wax. It was my wife who first spied Final Detail on QVC, and was impressed by the claims of the manufacturer. Mindful of the many hours her hubby spent washing and waxing their cars, she ordered.

Perhaps displaying a bit of gender-based skepticism, I regarded the product with a noncommittal “Hmmm.” It seemed too good to be true. But because of the degraded condition of the wax on hand (I had stupidly left it the garage, where it had frozen over the winter), Final Detail was pressed into service earlier than anticipated.

And I was awed.

My car shone like the proverbial diamond. It was its own auto show. The sun was reflected in a tightly-focused, blinding point of light. Even better, Final Detail could be used across several different types of surfaces. I was immersed in Final Detail delirium. People stared. 

(At the car. Not my delirium.) 

Not so surprisingly, my wife was immersed in a gentle form of I-told-you-so delight. As if I even needed the reminder, she was a woman worth listening to. And I don't hesitate to say I did.

Marital tangents aside, I became hooked on Final Detail. I swore by the stuff. But life changed, and finances no longer allowed for luxuries like garages. And things like waxing the car took a backseat to things like looking for a job.

When we were again able to afford housing with garages, I resumed my old habits. The diamond-like luster it cloaked my 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder* in made my heart swell. Perfection!

So when bottle number-one of a two-pack ran dry, I began searching for replacements. I may as well been looking for a break on my Illinois property tax. It is gone.

There is a lady by the name of Bridgette in Sumner County, Tennessee who is selling a bottle on Varage Sale for $30—roughly three-times its original price. But apart from hers, good luck.

However humiliating it is to admit, I am a consumer-oriented capitalist at heart. And when I find that rare product that either tastes really good or works really well, I seek an LTR faster than a lonely soul on a dating site.

I mean, I'm there.

But the world's titans of industry need to cooperate. It's hard to believe this even needs to be said, but I can't have an LTR by myself. And insofar as One Skillet dinners and Final Detail car wax are concerned, I seem destined to remain a party of one at a table for two.

Sigh.

* = This is a bald-faced lie. While I am presumably capable of driving and waxing a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, there exist several million reasons why this won't ever happen. 

 

Consuming Cars

The Greek storyteller Aesop is credited with the expression 'Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it.' And while the following story doesn't quite lead to its protagonist getting what he asked for, towering clouds roiling with portent were appearing on the horizon with alarming frequency.

Let me explain.

It all began in October, when a man spotted an affordable used Porsche Cayman online. It appeared well cared-for and lightly used. Remarkably, it was neither black, grey nor white.

The man made an appointment with the seller and drove to look it over and perhaps take a spin. Unlike so many things which appear online, the car looked as it did in the pictures. It was in great shape with no discernible flaws.

The problem came when the man expressed a desire to take it out of the showroom and drive it. “That's staying here for now” said the salesman.

This was a form of bait and switch and the man should have left after expressing his displeasure. Instead, he answered the quick-thinking salesman's next question. “Have you ever considered a 911?”

He laughed. “Those are waaay out of my league.”

(For those of you mostly uninterested in cars, a 911 is a very expensive sports car and is the cornerstone of the Porsche brand. New, they are unobtainable for anything less than a hundred thousand dollars. Used, the initial price is often less. But you stand a good chance of making up the difference in repairs if you don't buy very, very wisely.)

“Maybe not” said the salesman henceforth referred to as Swifty. “Let me show you something.”

Like an innocent child lured with promises of candy, the man followed. He had not dared to even consider a 911. Now that resolve was dissipating. He silently chastised himself yet never slowed. He was going to be tempted. And if he were honest, would admit he wanted to be.

The whore.

Inside a dark cinder block warehouse were an assortment of new and old Porsches. Boxsters, Caymans, 911s. Even a 944. Swifty searched for one, specifically.

“Ah!” he cried. “There it is.”

Against the wall was a pewter-colored 2008 Turbo 911. As the era's 911s did, it managed to look sleek and muscular simultaneously. Menacing. Potent. Coiled. It practically appeared in motion even when still.

“Let me open it up” said Swifty.

The salesman tried to start it but the battery had lost its charge. He left to retrieve a portable charger. After a couple of minutes the car was running, with a throaty burble spilling from the quadruple exhaust pipes.

The man got in. Enveloped in a cocoon of tan leather with a sea of important-looking gauges in front of him and a firm, contoured seat beneath him, the man was, for all intent and purposes, under the influence.

He grabbed the steering wheel. He wanted to go fast—now.

Correctly reading his customer, Swifty offered up a test drive. The man grunted.

The man carefully steered the car out of the warehouse and picked his way through a tightly-packed lot to the street. Mindful of scraping the front end while exiting, he eased the car onto the road.

It felt magnificent. Like an immensely powerful beast stretching its legs before bounding off into heretofore unknown realms of speed and adhesion. The man felt intensely alive. He was electrified.

On most test drives he was a picture of restraint and self-control, rarely allowing so much as a smile even when his brain was doing cartwheels. But when traffic presented an opportunity for a good stab of the accelerator pedal, the man heard himself say “Woooo!”

He was giving the game away.

Afterwards, it was safe to say the man was aroused. No. He was corrupted. He gazed at the car stupidly as Swifty reiterated the finer points of the 997 series 911 and its Mezger engine. Despite his blood collecting in a region south of his brain, the man was able to formulate a semi-coherent response when Swifty asked “Interested?”

The car interrupted the man's sleep for nights afterward. The contrast of the tan leather interior with the metallic pewter-colored paint. The magnificent sound that emanated from the exhaust pipes. The taut sense of control the car possessed, even at forty miles an hour.

With the Cayman long-forgotten, the man acted on his better impulses and researched the 911. Was it reliable? What design flaws had twelve years revealed? And how best to recognize the seemingly innocuous condition that could erupt into a wallet-busting cataclysm?

The man learned a lot. About bore scoring and IMS bearings and how expensive maintaining and repairing a 911 could be. Unfazed, he continued to lust after it, nearly to the exclusion of all else. With a profound amount of trepidation, he admitted he needed to act on his desire.

Otherwise he would know no peace.

The man called numerous garages and repair shops to compare costs and the thoroughness of their respective pre-purchase inspections. Were compression tests included? IMS inspections? One shop in particular seemed especially qualified, and buoyed by the fact he could at last get an expert and objective opinion on the car he queried Swifty.

“Mind if I get a PPI on the '08 911?”

With Swifty's blessings, the man called the shop back to make an appointment. Whereas the shop had originally sounded almost eager and in complete agreement of the need for a PPI on a twelve year-old 911, it now sounded unenthused and almost recalcitrant, especially after hearing the seller of the car.

Even more-strangely, the shop's rep asked the name of the salesman the man was working with. Huh? Did they have some kind of mutual non-aggression pact or what?

Something didn't smell right.

And that wasn't all that changed. Where Swifty had earlier requested only a signature on a loaner agreement, a copy of the driver's license and proof of insurance, he now wanted a two-thousand dollar deposit to hold the car while it was taken in for its PPI.

Wait. Two-thousand-dollars to hold the car for a three-and-a-half hour PPI? Seriously?

This was getting weird. Fast.

And if it wasn't getting weird-enough fast-enough, know that Swifty added it wasn't “fair” to the other salesmen or to potential customers to hold the car with a deposit if he wasn't going to buy it.

Huh? But you said...

The man's internal logic processors shut-down and he was suddenly overcome with a great weariness. The months of should-I-or-shouldn't-I uncertainty suddenly weighed upon him like a pile of pig iron.

Arriving at the conclusion he was working way too hard to spend money on a complicated, often-temperamental twelve-year old car without a speck of warranty, the man unplugged. He was done.

Freed of the lingering doubt and indecision, he felt lighter than he had in months. Without a shred of evidence, the man felt he had dodged a bullet.

Or a troublesome 911. Take your pick.

My Conflicted Love

I’ve always been a car nut. In fact, I could say “car” before I mastered the two-syllable complexities of “mama”. Fortunately, I was born to a mother who, gracious by nature, forgave my misaligned priorities.

Obviously, something about the rolling sculpture of metal, glass, chrome and rubber fascinated me.

The day I discovered I didn’t possess the math and engineering skills necessary to be a car designer was probably the worst of my youth. Then why had I endured the classroom ridicule of so many teachers as I resolutely attempted to translate the cars in my imagination to paper?

This infatuation subsequently ebbed and flowed over the years, as I (in turn) discovered pop music, sports and girls. But it was never far from the surface, and reemerged in my late-twenties as strong as ever. It became conflicted as I gradually became aware of the degree to which the automobile shaped and influenced the twentieth century.

Yet my love is an egalitarian one. It encompasses everything, from old to new and up market on down. From 1929 Duesenbergs to the new three-cylinder Ford Fiesta. To my way of thinking, the Honda Accord is every bit the marvel a dazzling, futuristic concept car is.

This because the Accord fulfills its purpose in a way few things in life ever do.

But despite the perfection of its utility, there aren’t very many people who lust for the Accord. It isn’t sexy. There is no exotic racing lineage. No cache. No status. It is merely the preferred appliance of the American soccer mom. For high-status sexy, you must look to Europe: England, Germany and Italy.

BMW, Bentley, Mercedes, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Porsche and Ferrari offer status and exclusivity to their owners. Attention. Sex appeal. Validation. Ownership inspires an I-have-one-and-you-don’t sense of superiority.

But it isn’t all hand-stitched leather and finely-calibrated engines.

While the rest of us look on longingly, the owner of a Porsche 911 must cough up three-hundred-dollars for an oil change. The eager buyer of the new Porsche 918 will lay out 6K for the extravagance of a heater. 26K for “upgraded” leather. And 63K for something called liquid metal paint.

Porsche extends to prospective buyers an additional opportunity to boost its year-end earnings via the Weissach Package. What the buyer gets for a jaw-dropping 84K is the deletion of three components from the car.

That’s right. Stuff is taken off the car. For eighty-four thousand dollars.

Check-off the Weissach Package box on your order form and your sound insulation, leather upholstery and a portion of the passenger-side cooling infrastructure is removed in the interest of reducing mass.

I have just one question: is it more to remove the “upgraded” leather?

The total weight loss amounts to 90 pounds. I hope Weight Watchers is taking note. You seeing this, Slim-Fast? That’s nine-hundred and thirty-three dollars a pound.

But when you’re dropping $845,000 on a car, what’s another 84 thou? Percentage-wise, it’s like adding a GPS unit and upgraded sound to your Camry or Jeep Grand Cherokee. No biggie. Right?

Manufacturers like Porsche know intimately how desperate the well-heeled are to display their well-heeledness. The well-to-do require ever more exclusive and outrageous product, the better to stay one step ahead of the Joneses.

And brands like Porsche and Bentley and Ferrari are only too happy to charge them for it.

For those of us on the other side of the glass, we can only laugh at their desperation. While many of us would like to give it to the one-percent, it is ironic that we have Porsche to do it for us.

In this, the Age of Diminished Expectations, it’s something.