"That's what happens when you drink and drive"

Zack's post has inspired me to write about a truck I saw a couple of weeks ago. I was walking down the street past a construction site when I passed a hideous truck. By hideous I mean repulsive. I puked a little bit in my throat as I passed it, and I was struggling to think of the best way to describe this truck when the guy next to me said "that's why you don't drink and drive." No, this wasn't one of those torn up trucks that they plop down in front of a high school for a week to discourage drunk driving. This was a functional (barely) pickup truck. Well, let me correct myself: it used to be a pickup truck. Take a look at the front half and you'll see where we're going with this:

Now you may think that you are looking at the front half of a "souped-up" Plymouth Reliant from back in the day, and that wouldn't be a bad guess. Here's one for your comparison:

Ahh, what a beautiful car. Almost as beautiful as a late 90s Pontiac Grand Am. Some people just have an excellent taste in cars. But I digress.

Let's zoom out and take a look at this truck, because it is a truck. Otherwise it would have no place on this blog:

You may be wondering why the owner of this truck has left his windows wide open. Now the obvious answer would be that he doesn't want it to get too hot when he leaves it out all day in the blazing Virginia sun. But upon closer examination, we can see the real reason. Look at his door handles, or rather where his door handles should be. Hmmm. Apparently, the only way this guy can get into his truck is with the inside latches.

Why remove the door handles? To go faster, of course! Less appendages hanging on the outside makes for less aerodynamic drag. This is why he lowered his truck too (Editor's note: the placement of the front tag is critical as well. In this case, when the tag is placed on the left side of the grill at a 7 degree angle, air flow to the engine is optimized):

As I said before, perhaps there is not better discouragement for drunk driving than this truck. Like a tattoo that you accidentally get on a wild and crazy night in Cancun (and then AIDS from the needle), this truck must have been "tricked out" on some sort of week-long meth high. The pictures above don't do this truck justice, though, because, you see, the owner had to make some concessions of bed space in order to make his truck have less clearance than a factory Porsche. This took a bit of ingenuity (but judging by this guy's license plate placement, he certainly isn't lacking that):