The Cars of The X-Files: 23rd(ish) Anniversary

I WANT TO CAN’T

BELIEVE

. . . .that it’s been 20 23 years since The X-Files debuted on television. Actually, at the time of this (second) writing it’s been over 23 years, but who’s counting after this long? (Me. It was 8540 days ago) It was September 10, 1993 (a Friday) that the longest-running science fiction television show (9 seasons) brought its own brand of creepiness into our homes on a weekly basis. IIRC, except for Twin Peaks this was probably one of the darkest of programs (literally and figuratively), although imbued with a strong sense of (again, dark) humor as well. Between Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and its spinoff, Millennium, viewers in the 1990s not only got a weekly dose of paranormal criminality, they also got a firm sense of what sort of place the Pacific Northwest was: cloudy, dark, and rainy for 9 months out of the year (all were filmed, in part, around the Seattle/Vancouver, B.C. area).

And The Cars of The X-Files? Creepy? Cool? Quirky? Errr, no. Not even close most of the time. As a matter of fact, when contemplating this post I was rather hard pressed to find something interesting to say about them, some “hook” to highlight an unusual or interesting feature of the automobiles used in the show and what they implied about the collective Car Lust zeitgeist in the 1990s. In truth, and with few exceptions, there is a dearth of really neat cars presented to pique our Car Lust interest.

So why does this post even exist? Because despite a relative lack of noteworthy rides throughout its 9-year run, there is still a lesson or two to be learned from how automobiles were used and presented in this show and others of the period (and before and since for that matter). A lesson that I try to keep in mind even while I write soaring prose to famous and not so famous cars that capture my attention and that I develop strong feelings about, whether positive or negative. And a lesson we might all keep in mind when looking at, drooling over, and sometimes even dropping some major coin on a car of our dreams:

Sometimes a car is just a car.

CC and Me

The Great Used Car Adventure of 2016: Final Chapter

Having told you the cautionary tale of my epic quest for a used car this past fall, it’s time to tell you all about the car I ended up buying.

The best shorthand description I can give of my 2009 Volkswagen CC is this: “It wants to be a BMW when it grows up.”

That’s not an insult by any means.  Let me explain.

Daihatsu’s Rocky

It was the dawn of the present-day SUVs, say around 1990.  The Ford Explorer and Mazda Navajo were brand new.  The gigantic Chevy Suburban and Blazer had been with us for some time, but their uses were still somewhat commercial or they made great work vehicles for the horsey crowd.  And even though they were enormously popular, the word “craze” did not apply to those behemoths.  But when SUVs became mid-sized and even smaller, their sales took off like rockets!

1985-2005 GMC Safari / Chevrolet Astro (M-body platform)

This article originally appeared in CarLustBlog.com on November 7, 2012. Aside from some editing, revitalized hyperlinks and a couple of additional pics, it’s all the same.

There used to be an article comparing the Safari and the Astro with their cousins, the “Dustbuster” minivans. Judging by the results and by the comments, the Astro/Safari won, though it must be said that the “Dustbusters” gave them a ride for their money. In said article, written by a close friend of this blog, we find this rather summarizing piece of information:

The Vega’s Lost Cousin?

When all of us writers here at It Rolls were at Car Lust, we had a grand time with Chevy’s Vega.  There were Vega Theme Weeks, individual Vega posts, and other merriment beyond belief at this disaster of a car.  So I guess it was just a matter of time until the ribbing continues (witnessed by our masthead), as the other day I found a little skeleton secret  in GM’s Australian Division closet… the Holden Torana.