the new pollution
She's got a carburetor tied to the moon.
The tik-tok girlies are saying that “real baddies whip cigarette cars” and they are correct. Hot bitches, buy once/cry once, car payments are fucking out, infotainment is out, elaborate Bluetooth receivers and scratched thrift store CDs are in! A leased blob is a crippling vape addiction, a slow and unknowable death full of off-gassing plastic and bureaucratic despair. Your leased sense of security is one out of warranty repair bill from disaster. They are squeezing you everywhere! You think the dealership isn’t going to join in on the fun? We've been trying to reach you! We've been trying to fuck you!
The “cigarette car” is not clearly defined. But like pornography, “I know it when I see it”, and when I see it, I say, “damn that's really hot”. Many vehicles can occupy the space and we won’t get into venn diagrams, you know it the moment you tug on the door handle (Pull up, it sticks). Agency and ownership are what define the cigarette car (or perhaps a pervasive smell). The acceptance that this car, with its age and flaws, is my responsibility and I will accept the barbs and misdirected judgment of the rivian’d dipshits when I walk around to let you out of the broken passenger door. I may even learn how to fix it one day. Either way, my car, my choice, my Marlboro 27 (you can bum one). Don’t clarna your carvana! Just meet a man from craigslist with a wad of cash in your pocket (make sure he’s got the title).
What are the hotties whipping in 2024? A proper cigarette car is usually inherited from a childless uncle or godmother that's been no contact since “the incident”. Not all of us have the fortune of complicated family dynamics, but here at Harry’s we are family and don’t worry, we can make it kitchen table polycule complicated. Let us have a smoke and walk through the lot.
All roads lead back here so we may as well start with he longitudinally mounted Buick V6. From bowling alleys, truck stops and adult book store parking lots, you can find America’s last hand at the sedan, idling, lights on, puffing away at its pack of Merits. 20,000 roads, I went down down down and they all lead me straight back to the general motors W platform.
Is the Bench seat the cure to male loneliness? To population decline? Perhaps we could we all just scoot a little closer? Share a puff? This regal Oldsmobile Delta 88 could be the answer to all of those problems and more. A one owner car with just over 100k on the clock, the last of the Landau roof’ed luggage rack’d see-dans. I could post about 20 more of these things, they come, they go, some are better than others, all of them are cheaper than a vampiric lease. This one is 3500.00
Our next entry from the good people at general motors is the plastic-tipped cigarello of the car world. The Final generation of the El Camino. All of the utility of a Ford Ranger without an ounce of the charm. The anemic 305, the blue velour, the ROAD, put your bike in it? These used to stink of 2008-2014 east williamsburg bushwick banjo raggamuffin expansionist hipster but I believe the Elco has lost every ounce of “status” it ever earned by rotting in front of mckibbin lofts and has returned to its status as the most dirtbaggy thing you can drive. This one is somehow not on cinder blocks on a backroad but instead in Massapequa for 4500
But let’s expand our definition here, the cigarette as the treat from the gas station, you’ve worked hard? You are thriving?! Enjoy it? Hottie with a book deal? Joan Didion had that awful Corvette. Perhaps you are the newly road legal editor of New York’s best sized magazine? Pleasure Perhaps? Pour moi? Smoke em if you got em, you can have nice things!
Jesus fucking christ, it’s another front wheel drive buick ??????? (this ones a coupe)?????? The asylum is calling, they want to know why I can’t stop thinking about the TECHNO COUPE!
Is the Buick Regal nice? Argue amongst yourselves. Gaze upon that digital dash but watch the ash on the velour!
This Mercedes barely qualifies as a cigarette car, but the price is right! 2,500 for one of the best wagons ever built, running, driving, in Brooklyn, with a blue interior? I can’t even think of something funny to write, this is a hot deal baby!
Alright alright, how about a car from the golden age of the cigarette? A car with more ashtrays than seatbelts. This 1969 Mercury Monterey Custom Coupe is the whole carton of Chesterfields as prescribed by your doctor to calm your nerves!
At 20 feet long, this car occupies space like a student protester and smokes like Oswold’s rifle. It took a complete kook to order this car in 1969, A full sized coupe with zero options. A likely one of one. Compelled forward by the fantastic Ford-Edsel 390 V8. Its gas consumption explains our military presence in the middle east. It's villainous outward presence ends when you enter the voluminous golden interior, two massive benches easily fit six adults, eight friends. The one finger power steering floats you down the road like a magic carpet on mood stabilizers. It is the ultimate passengers car. It's 4200.00, and they simply don't make em like this anymore (for good reason). This coupe is longer than my full size pickup, it's longer than my unfinished marvel vs capcom erotic fan fiction novel, it's Virginia slims 100 territory and it could be YOURS! I took a hammer blow to the head working on it and that's why the price is so so so good. Hit a girl up if you have the space and could you spare a cig for little ole me?
