My editor and I are stuck in a great mob. The survivors of yet another lost weekend in Vegas are staggering in various degrees of weariness and unwelcome sobriety as we slowly make our way to airport security. It's as if all the hotels on the new strip vomited up the contents of their rooms simultaneously, and I can't wait to make it past TSA, onto my plane and into unconsciousness as it carries me back to Madison and safety.
How did this journey ever take place? By whose grand scheme had we come to be in this godforsaken desert? The culprit was some run-amok marketing arm of General Motors and its last gasp of Detroit hubris before the long, cold night of dwindling oil supplies tightened their stranglehold around the throat of excess.
Yes, old GM had flown us out here with a crop of wide-eyed college journalists to drive the latest and best four-wheeled cock-extensions money could buy. We were to soon after attend some event known as Hot Import Nights: Late Shift. What was this gathering named by soft-core porn writers, and why did they want us? This was on the back of my mind as my editor and I stumbled off the plane into the unrelenting desert air. The casinos of the new strip loomed deceptively close to the airport, each trying to outdo the next, with no institutional memory of the Tower of Babel. I needed a drink.
But no, not yet. First we had to attend the test drive, and our hosts from Motor City insisted on absolute sobriety when driving someone else's vehicles. Fine. I'd play by their rules, but only for so long.
Moving through baggage claim, we quickly spotted our driver, The Cuban. He threw our bags into the back of the idling Cadillac Escalade, and we were off.
"Ees thees your first time een Vaygahs?" The Cuban implored. "Ahr you ready for eet?"
"I'm never ready for anything past the foot of my bed, but I'll be buggered if I'm not prepared to meet it with clenched fists," I answered.
The Cuban turned back to the road with a razor-sharp smile and we drove on.
Arriving at a test track situated improbably across the street from the Sahara, we were met by a young woman named Angela. She was one of several newly-minted college grads pressed into employ by GM that we would meet that day. "Come with me, everyone is already here!" she beckoned.
We were led into a tiny room jam-packed with wild-eyed, khaki-clad college journalists. Each one bore a nametag with such identifiers as Stu from Hoekstra, Jules from Southern Cal, Phil from Penn State and so forth. What was I getting into? My editor and I took the two remaining seats on opposite ends of the room and nervously shot each other glances as the presentation began. Seconds stretched into minutes and minutes into an hour as we were subjected to a high-pressure introduction to the world of Big Auto.
There was only so much a raccoon could bear, and after hearing about how great it was to work for a big corporation, I just couldn't take it anymore. "When do we drive?! Put me behind the wheel of a large automobile!" I screamed.
"No time like the present!" Angela was unfazed by my outburst and the conference room emptied out onto the track. For the next two hours, my nostrils were filled with a barrage of new car interiors and boiling asphalt. I drove the unholy abomination of an H2 up and down an obstacle course and guided a GTO through its paces. The grail, however, was the cherry red Corvette.
As I plummeted through the course, bombing around S-curves, I peppered my terrified GM-issued chaperone cowering in the passenger's seat with questions about the 'Vette's capabilities. "What's the wheelbase? How fast does she corner in a snowstorm? How many shots from a .44 can she take to the engine block before bursting into flames?"
"I, I don't know," he stammered, white-faced.
"Well come on man!" I implored. "These are the things that an American car buyer needs to know!" If this machine wasn't able to even outrun a local police force in hot pursuit to the county line, then what was the point?
Consumer Reports loves to talk about MPG, air emissions and safety ratings. But they fail to address the real concerns of the discerning automobile enthusiast and never give a thought to evaluating a vehicle's wheelie abilities or front bumper blood-proofing.
But enough of this. It was time for the next scene in the show. We loaded into the awaiting caravan and drove off to UNLV's football stadium, the site of Hot Import Nights. After a 20-minute ride to Las Vegas' pre-fab-home-encircled exterior, we set upon the scene.
This is what GM wanted us to see: the next frontier in car sales. It wasn't Grandma looking for a land-yacht; it wasn't the legions of soccer moms lusting after grocery-getters. It was the young, so-called 'urban' market. Apparently this previously undesirable demographic was starting to spend enough money to garner a second look from GM and look they did. And what they found were the Tuners.
It started with the Honda Civics. In the early '90s, car enthusiasts found these autos to have an acceptable engine and a highly-customizable body. They took to it in droves, and it remains one of the most stolen cars, even years after they stopped being produced. In the past several years, GM has taken an interest in Tuners — those enthusiasts who spend tens of thousands of dollars on car modifications in their pursuit of fine bitches. GM has even gone so far as to give complete specifications of some engines to the Tuners. The secrets that other car companies closely guard, GM chose to give away, in order to forge a pact with a valuable market segment.
Moving through the grounds of Hot Import Nights, we saw many a car indeed. All manner of customizations were there — it was the Bunny Ranch of Pimp My Ride. The flip side to the emerging underground of tuning was the sponsorship. Here and there were booths staffed with scantily-clad model wannabes hawking free T-shirts and keychains. But lordy was it hot. My biscuits were burning.
Too hot to stay and ogle, we left. Back to the new strip, we checked into our rooms at New York, New York and, ignoring the lure of immediate gambling, headed on up to decompress before dinner.
Ah dinner — one more indulgence on the tab of General Motors. Filet mignon, and not shabby at that! But what's this, the waitress denying me a drink? Not even a beer, little cousin to water? What hell am I in where I can't get a simple lager with my steak? Some sick joke, no doubt perpetrated by a liability attorney lodged deep in GM's colon. Well I'd find libations soon enough. I just had to make it through a short course of awkward dinner conversation about regional weather patterns. No, no fucking way can I get through this unbolstered. Fortunately, I brought a whole flask filled with bolstering, and one or five surreptitious pours into my Coke later, I was getting into the mood.
We broke from dinner with fresh resolve and my editor and I started off toward the casino floor. The other young Turks planned to retire to their rooms and meet again around 11 p.m., no doubt to take two hours arguing before retiring to the hotel bar to discuss the latest Maureen Dowd article. Not us, brother. And joining our conspiracy we had one new recruit: Cal, a junior journalism major from Santa Barbara specializing in rants about the government suppressing a purer form of ethanol.
We strode out of the lobby into the gripping night air, hailed a cab and got down to business.
Rocky the Herald Comics Raccoon can be contacted at [email protected]. Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of Rocky's adventures in Las Vegas.