Car Nut

I’m a car nut. Not a grease monkey – I couldn’t take a car engine apart and tell you where every piece goes, I just enjoy reading about the high performance vehicles, the lustness of the lines, shapes, and wonderful sounds the engines make when revved to the limit. Brands like Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini make the the hairs on my neck stand up, nothing beats the sound of a Ferrari 360 Modena with a Tubi exhaust near 8,000 RPM – oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I hope one day to be able to afford a fleet of cars of my own, in the mean time I read up the car trade rags to keep up.

I’ve been fortunate to have the “car gene” in my family, my father is a big car fan and because of his desire and ability to enjoy them, I’ve also benefited from this when I was younger, single and living at home. I got to drive a lot of the finest automobiles you could imagine. Those were the glory days, now I have to pay for them myself and that is not as much fun as driving them for free. Now comes the bad news.

All the years of driving cars, memorizing the 0-60 times, HP increases, and techno-wizardry that is now expected in the most basic car such as ABS, SRS, traction control, GPS, and a DVD entertainment system, the one device that hasn’t received any major updates in decades is the window wiper.

The wiper is probably one of the most important moving parts on a car when it comes to safety, it clears the windshield so you can see where you’re going! Of course, no matter what kind of car I’ve driven, from my 10yr old Mercury Topaz to my father’s $150,000 Rolls Royce Silver Spur II, the wipers have always sucked.

You know what I’m talking about –just when it starts to rain or snow, you get streaks, and where to the streaks occur, right in the exact line of sight. The passenger side is always as clear as a whistle- this is very annoying to me. The technological advances I’d expect in wipers has gone nowhere. You can buy a car that goes from 0-100-0 in 12 seconds for about $45,000 but hope for clear weather otherwise you might not see where you’re going.

I’m calling out to you smart minded creative folks to figure this out. Build me a wipe-o-tron or something, make the wiper work as regularly as the windows goes up and down. Go create.

Rock On.