Latest / Never Post / The Happiest Car On The Internet

Transcript

The Happiest Car On The Internet · Never Post

0:10
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
0:13
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
0:16
Rugnetta, and we have a revving show for you this week. Producer
0:20
Georgia talks with Rory Caroll of Alloy Mag about car culture
0:25
online generally and the Renault Twingo specifically. How did the
0:32
discontinued darling automobile of the Internet meme set attain
0:39
such notoriety, and how does the adoption of this European
0:43
compact reflect larger shifts in car culture, especially as it
0:49
has moved, like everything else, increasingly online? But first,
0:55
we're gonna take a quick break.
0:56
You're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the member
0:59
feed. And when we return, Georgia, Rory, Car Culture, and
1:04
the adorable Renault Twingo.
1:31
Georgia Hampton: The racing video game Gran Turismo is an
1:35
extremely reputable, if not the most reputable driving simulator
1:39
on the market. A car enthusiast's dream game, which
1:43
promises that all drivable cars offer extremely realistic
1:47
handling, mimicking the way that each one of these vehicles would
1:51
actually behave if you really drove them on a racetrack. And
1:55
in April of this year, Gran Turismo announced three new cars
1:59
that players could drive in GT seven. Two of the three cars in
2:04
this update were predictably racy for a racing game. The
2:08
first was a now retired Porsche nine sixty four, a variant of
2:12
the nine eleven series that was only produced between 1989 and
2:16
1994.
2:17
The second, the Yang Wang u nine is, according to the company's
2:22
website, the fastest EV production car in the world with
2:26
a top speed of 308.33 miles per hour. It belongs to a class of
2:33
luxury cars called supercars. Lavishly designed vehicles that
2:37
are so exclusive and so terrifyingly powerful that
2:42
they're basically works of art. Cars like this are sold for
2:48
multiple millions of dollars. So while, yes, the u nine is
2:54
technically a production car, meaning that quote unquote
2:57
normal people could buy them, it is impossible to do so unless
3:02
you're a prince with an empire's worth of unimaginable wealth or
3:07
like a billionaire oil executive.
3:10
For the vast majority of us, Gran Turismo is our one chance
3:15
to experience what it would feel like to drive this car. But as
3:19
far as I could tell from looking at reactions online, nobody in
3:23
the Gran Turismo fandom cared about the u nine or the Porsche
3:26
nine sixty four. The exciting part of the April update to GT
3:30
seven was the third car. This car was the most anticipated,
3:36
most talked about, and by far the most celebrated when it was
3:40
announced. Are you familiar with the Renault Twingo?
3:45
Rory Carroll: Of course. That's an all timer.
3:47
Georgia Hampton: Could you describe to me what it looks
3:50
like?
3:51
Rory Carroll: I mean, first of all, it's smiling. I mean, it it
3:53
is actively it's doing the, like, anime eyes, and it has,
3:58
like, a little tiny human smile on the front bumper. It is the
4:01
happiest looking vehicle maybe in history.
4:04
Georgia Hampton: That's Rory Caroll. He's an automotive
4:07
journalist who used to run Auto Week magazine, then was the
4:10
editor in chief at Jalopnik, and most recently launched the car
4:13
site Alloy last October. Rory has bylines in pretty much every
4:21
car publication. And he's the only person I'd wanna talk to
4:24
about the fact that a 1993 Renault Twingo had somehow made
4:30
its way onto one of the most well respected driving games of
4:34
all time. Because as a passive observer, the kinds of cars I
4:39
expected to see in a game like Gran Turismo were the ones I
4:43
mentioned before.
4:44
Extremely fast, intimidating looking cars, luxury cars, rare
4:50
vehicles like that yangwang, or even something as unusual as a
4:54
moon buggy, which was in fact offered in a previous update.
4:58
Speaker 4: K. When he hits the craters and starts bouncing is
5:00
when he gets his rooster tail, he makes sharp turns. Hey. That
5:05
was a good stop. Those wheels just lock.
5:07
Mark off.
5:11
Georgia Hampton: But definitely not the Renault Twingo. An
5:15
affordable and dorky looking mass production car that was
5:19
moderately popular during its thirty plus years on the market.
5:22
Yet somehow, there it was. Its smiling face beaming back at me
5:28
unabashed and unafraid of the two far more powerful cars that
5:33
sat idling alongside it. And it matters that this car of all
5:39
cars was the one that got chosen.
5:45
Rory Carroll: You can't just throw any car in there. Like,
5:48
there there have been cheap kind of micro cars in Gran Turismo
5:51
since Gran Turismo started, and none of them have had this like
5:55
mummified or or kind of like Internet moment of celebrity
5:59
that the Twingo did when it when it joined. Right? Like, this is
6:02
kind of like a singular thing where it's like, oh, everyone's
6:05
just excited about the Twingo being in in Gran Turismo.
6:09
Georgia Hampton: Even before its debut on GT seven, there's been
6:12
a small but very vocal meaning community around the Twingo.
6:17
People spliced in pictures of it keeping pace with a Formula one
6:20
car or pasted it into a fake breaking news bulletin declaring
6:24
that a Twingo just won Le Mans, an extremely prestigious
6:28
endurance race that takes twenty four hours to complete. In real
6:32
life, it would be completely impossible for a Twingo to win a
6:37
race like that. It's just not powerful enough. But online, the
6:41
Twingo could do it all.
6:45
And putting a car like that into Gran Turismo plays into the
6:48
joke. It's making the meme of the Twingo winning Le Mans a
6:52
reality. Well, at least through a screen. But it also brought
6:57
this jokiness into a much, much bigger digital spotlight. The
7:02
meme of the Twingo was no longer the darling of a community of
7:06
enthusiasts who had all found the same subreddit.
7:09
Now the meme ability of this funny little car exploded across
7:14
a broader online car culture.
7:16
Rory Carroll: Gran Turismo is like among the, you know,
7:20
whatever mainstream racing games. It's like, this is the
7:23
real racing simulator. This is the most serious, which is like,
7:25
it's great. It's incredible. It's very impressive.
7:28
But that's that makes it so much funnier when you see a Twingo
7:33
out of the track or like a a huge group of Twingos out on the
7:37
track. Like, that's why it's good because it's like this is a
7:40
cartoon car. This is a Pokemon going out and racing against
7:45
much more serious machinery.
7:48
Georgia Hampton: And at first, I thought that was the beginning
7:52
and end of this. The Twingo got onto g t seven because it was a
7:56
meme. And it was a meme because, I mean, it's called a Twingo.
8:02
And it looks the way it looks. Like, it's impossible to
8:07
overstate how much this car is just like a little guy.
8:12
The Twingo is the kind of car a child would draw if asked to
8:15
draw a car. It looks happy to see you. It's so cute. But if
8:23
Gran Turismo was just looking for a car that was regularly
8:26
being laughed at on the Internet, they'd throw a Tesla
8:29
Cybertruck in there. No.
8:31
The Twingo and the online community around it represents
8:36
something else, something far, far bigger than a meme. And to
8:42
better understand that, we have to look at how the Twingo exists
8:47
within car culture IRL, and then how the Internet shook things
8:52
up. As an actual car on the market, the Twingo had two huge
9:12
benefits, affordability and accessible design.
9:16
Rory Carroll: It's one of those cars this is like my favorite
9:18
genre of cars, which is like a cheap car that does not punish
9:22
you for, like, not having a lot of money. So it's like great
9:26
design. The wheels are pushed way out into the corner, so
9:29
there's tons of space inside and it handles really well. And the
9:32
rear seat is on rails. Like, this was very unusual at the
9:36
time.
9:36
It's like a bench seat, but you could push the seat forward to
9:39
create more trunk space and push it back to create more leg room
9:42
so, like, adults can fit in the back of the car. And it just
9:46
like it is one of those things where it's like thoughtfully
9:51
designed. And again, it's it's supposed to, you know, it says
9:54
like, hey, look, we know you don't have a lot of money, but
9:57
that doesn't mean you have to have this miserable little car.
9:59
Like, this is gonna be a fun, cool experience.
10:01
Georgia Hampton: But the Twingo wasn't cool in the mainstream
10:04
sense of the word when it came to cars. Not by a long shot. A
10:08
cool car was more like a muscle car. Something loud and fast and
10:14
powerful. It was the 1968 Ford Mustang GT three ninety Fastback
10:19
driven by Steve McQueen in Bulleit.
10:21
A car that insists upon itself in its bulk or its ability to
10:26
beat your car in a drag race, a bully of a car. Offline,
10:35
mainstream car culture was and still is the stuff of the quote
10:40
unquote car guy. There are many versions of this person, but I
10:45
picture him like this. He's a middle aged white man wearing a
10:50
polo shirt tucked into slacks and white sneakers. Fancy watch,
10:56
worryingly tan skin, an avid Top Gear viewer.
11:00
He's the kind of guy who would be excited by the fact that I
11:03
just said 1968 Ford Mustang GT three ninety Fastback and that I
11:08
referenced the movie Bullet. As someone who's always been
11:11
interested in cars and racing, I grew up around this iteration of
11:15
the car guy. But regardless of his appearance, he is the
11:19
gatekeeper of mainstream offline capital c c car culture. And it
11:26
is a culture that has never been especially welcoming. There's
11:32
the issue of price and who can afford to drive certain kinds of
11:35
cars.
11:36
The way vehicles run, what kind of machinery they use, all of
11:40
that can become extremely technical very quickly. And if
11:44
you don't know what all those words mean, you'd be forgiven if
11:47
you didn't feel like participating in the
11:49
conversation. It's very easy to make a discussion about, say, a
11:54
Formula one car sound like an extremely dense textbook in a
11:58
subject you never studied. The IRL car guy really only makes
12:04
space for other car guys who have the same interests, dare I
12:08
say, same look as he does. My experience, talking to these
12:13
kinds of men quickly turns into a pop quiz.
12:16
You are veritable, oh, you watch Formula One? Name five drivers
12:21
currently on the grid. And I can, and I do, but it sucks
12:28
every time. The car guy has dictated a lot of what has been
12:32
deemed cool or interesting in the culture of cars for a very,
12:37
very long time. And also notably, what wasn't cool?
12:41
Rory Carroll: Like, I can remember conversations like, oh,
12:44
you can't buy a NA Miata. That's a girl's car. That's a it's a
12:48
hairdresser's car or whatever. You know, when I was a kid, and
12:50
I think in in probably before that too, it was all about
12:54
performance and like, oh, my thing is better than your thing.
12:57
Like, I read in Car and Driver that my m three is faster than
13:01
your 300 z x or whatever.
13:05
It's better. Like, I you know, we've looked at the numbers and
13:08
proven that it it is my thing is better than yours. It was men
13:12
trying to go fast, and, like, that was the kind of beginning
13:15
and end of it.
13:16
Georgia Hampton: In this world, the Twingo wasn't just uncool.
13:20
It was irrelevant, uninteresting. It didn't fit the
13:24
criteria of power, speed, and prestige that made it worth
13:27
talking about. A Twingo would never be seen in Bullitt. Or to
13:32
use a more contemporary car guy example, the Twingo was never
13:36
going to be in a Fast and Furious movie.
13:42
Dom Toretto was never going to roll up to the end of the movie
13:45
cookout in one of these. In general, unless you are a
13:53
certain type of person with a certain type of insider
13:55
knowledge, car culture was not an easy thing to enter into. And
13:59
as this community moved on to the Internet, it's easy to
14:03
imagine that it would create an online culture that perpetuates
14:07
an explicitly exclusionary kind of knowledge hoarding. That the
14:11
memes would play into the highly technical, elite, oddly
14:16
competitive culture of one upmanship that kept this world
14:20
shut out from anyone who wasn't a stereotypical car guy. But
14:25
what's so exciting to me is that that's not what happened at all.
14:32
In fact, it's been the total opposite.
14:36
Rory Carroll: Because of the Internet and, again, because of
14:38
that dynamic around searching and kind of, like, be being a
14:42
connoisseur, I think, like, result has been all the barrier
14:47
barriers to entry have gotten lower because, like, it's it's
14:51
just there are more there's more knowledge about, like, weird,
14:54
cool, cheap cars. I think that's new too. I think, like, that
14:58
that car culture, and I think, you know, in large part because
15:02
of the Internet has grown to be much more inviting and much more
15:06
inclusive, and I think it is just more fun.
15:09
Georgia Hampton: Offline, there have always been a select few
15:12
car people who are into weird fun cars. But online, those
15:17
communities spread out to significantly more people than
15:20
they could ever have reached in the physical world. Rebuilding
15:24
the car community on the Internet somehow skirted the car
15:29
guy and his chokehold over what qualities were needed for a car
15:33
to be cool. Now cool can mean cute. It can mean fun.
15:43
Like, the fact that the Twingo is just a practical, but
15:47
beloved, goofy little guy of a car that is happy to see you,
15:52
that's a plus on the Internet. All the things that made the
15:55
Twingo a fringe interest for a certain community of enthusiasts
15:59
make it the perfect thing to be celebrated online.
16:03
Rory Carroll: A lot of meme culture, I think, like, just in
16:06
cars, but in everything is like it's sometimes, like, less about
16:10
the joke as far as, like, I'm gonna actually laugh at this,
16:14
but it's more about, like, in group signaling where it's like,
16:19
we understand this commonly. So we have, like, a sense of kind
16:23
of community and we're speaking a language that other people
16:25
don't understand. And I think, like, the Internet car culture
16:27
is in large part driven by that, like, ability to to demonstrate
16:35
your obscure knowledge that you know more that you're deeper in
16:37
it than the other person.
16:39
Georgia Hampton: But in the case of the online Twingo community,
16:42
the obscure knowledge isn't necessarily a ton of specs that
16:46
have to do with the drivetrain or torque. It's just the
16:50
awareness of a car that looks interesting. And that is such a
16:54
huge distinction between the IRL car culture and the digital one.
16:59
Because online, looking at memes about cars, all you have is what
17:04
the cars look like or maybe sound like. All you have is the
17:09
flattened version of the car that exists on your screen.
17:13
And through that format, it really helps to have a vehicle
17:17
that has a personality. A photo of a Mustang just looks like a
17:21
car. The Twingo looks like your buddy.
17:27
Rory Carroll: It is like it's so refreshing to be like, oh, look
17:30
at you. Look at you. Look at my little friend here, my little
17:33
French friend. You can formulate kind of an appreciation for a
17:38
car like the Twingo and express it, where it's like, it's good
17:41
because it's cute.
17:43
Georgia Hampton: And the Twingo's cuteness is the thing
17:44
that invites you in. In on the joke of the memes, and if you'd
17:49
like, into the culture that exists around this car. I had
17:53
never heard of the Twingo before the GT seven update. But the
17:57
second I saw its little egg shaped silhouette, I fell in
18:01
love. Then I started going down a rabbit hole of other cute,
18:07
interestingly designed cars.
18:09
I found the Nissan s car go, a car so wonderfully named because
18:14
it looks, yes, like a big snail. That then led me to the Nissan
18:19
Figaro, which looks like it should be driven by Stuart
18:23
Little. I spent a while looking at k cars, a class of Japanese
18:27
cars that are so small, they could easily fit inside my
18:32
living room. Those have actually had a meme streak in their own
18:35
right. Look them up.
18:36
You've almost certainly seen a post about a k car within the
18:40
last couple years. Honestly, look up all these cars. All of
18:44
them debuted before the Internet as we know it existed. But it's
18:48
only through the Internet that I, and now maybe you, had a
18:53
chance to learn about them. Each one of these cars has an online
18:57
community of people who love them.
19:00
And if you spend a little time clicking around, you can find
19:04
car people who are happy to be fans of a certain vehicle just
19:08
because it's cute. Like, that's the barrier to entry. And the
19:14
more I look at the Twingo, the more I adore it for this reason.
19:25
I've never really thought about playing Gran Turismo before, but
19:28
honestly, I would for the Twingo. I can tell already that
19:32
it would be an absolute nightmare to drive on a
19:36
racetrack.
19:37
It's too slow. It would almost certainly tip over on really
19:41
tight turns. But who cares?
19:46
Rory Carroll: That's what's good about it. That's what's inviting
19:49
about it. It invites people to, like, step back from this very
19:51
serious game and, like, experience something that is
19:54
just fun and inviting. I think that's great.
19:57
Georgia Hampton: The Twingo is approachable by design. It tells
20:00
you, hey, don't worry so much. I'm your friend, and I'm here to
20:05
get you where you're going. It only makes sense that the memes
20:09
around it are that way too. And sure, yes, there is still some
20:14
degree of if you know, you know about these posts.
20:16
Like, if you don't know what Lamons is, you won't completely
20:20
understand why it's funny to imagine a Twingo winning it. But
20:24
even so, the fact of the Twingo, its very nature, is the biggest
20:30
draw. And it so perfectly represents the kind of car
20:34
design I personally love. Sweet, lovely, and unserious. Here's my
20:42
favorite example.
20:43
The Volkswagen Beetle had the optional accessory of a small
20:47
bud vase attached to the dashboard. Like, who needs that?
20:52
But also, why not? IRL, I've never really found purchase for
20:59
my interest in cute car design. The car guys had nothing but
21:03
disdain and mockery for the VW Beetle's bud vase.
21:06
But on the Internet, the posts about the Twingo feel like a
21:10
doorway into this exact kind of car culture, one that has
21:15
nothing to do with speed or intimidation or technicalities,
21:21
but just the sheer appreciation of something fun.
21:27
Rory Carroll: I don't care that it's slow. It's actually better
21:29
because it's slow. You know what I mean? Like and it's it's not
21:32
cool because it's expensive. I don't need to prove any like,
21:34
it's cool because it's cheap and anyone can get one.
21:37
Georgia Hampton: On the Twingo's Internet, egalitarianism is
21:40
chic. That Yang Wang u nine with its over 300 miles per hour top
21:46
speed and unspeakably hefty price tag, it's tired. It's
21:52
boring. It's not fun. And at least on some very vocal corners
21:57
of the web, the people yearn for fun, for a cute little car that
22:03
drives around with a smile on its face.
22:13
A massive thank you to Rory Caroll for talking to me about
22:16
the Twingo and turning what I thought was going to be a simple
22:20
question of meme ability into one of the most wonderful and
22:25
frankly hopeful discussions I've ever had about car culture. I'll
22:30
include links in the show notes for Alloy, Jalopnik, and other
22:34
places where you can find more of his work. I will also,
22:37
obviously, include links to the cars that I mentioned in this
22:40
episode. Please, I am begging you, please go look at the S
22:46
cargo.
23:10
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We
23:12
are gonna be back here in the main feed on or around Thursday,
23:16
July 16. Is your wallet too heavy? Bank account, feeling
23:21
slightly too cumbersome. Allow Never Post to ease some of that
23:25
burden by handling four to 12 of your monthly dollars.
23:29
That's right. We have three membership tiers, 4, 7, and $12
23:34
depending upon how much of your wealth you would like Never Post
23:36
to manage by turning it into a podcast. Hey, it's a more sound
23:41
investment than a lot of other things out there. You can become
23:44
a member today at neverpo.st. Never Post's producers are
23:50
Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first
23:53
name, last name.
23:54
Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is
23:58
Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike
24:01
Rugnetta. Revving an engine to steal attention. Flirting cool
24:08
furniture with blithe lids closed. A tidy splash on a
24:11
mirror.
24:12
A feel of belonging and avoidance of cleaving to
24:15
incompletion as a flash as of hit by a flash or an echo or an
24:20
echo of a speech into stones. Tone deaf stick lashings who
24:24
spoke along school railings, paramount noise. Excerpt of
24:29
Stranger by Chris Cheek. Never Post is a production of Charts
24:34
and Leisure and it's distributed by Radiotopia.