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Author Topic: Car Trek
The_Tom
recently silent
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(quite a few images, so apologies for the wait)


Once upon a time, there was a television show entitled "Car Trek". It was about the adventures of a guy named Kirk who crisscrossed the American heartland in the mid-seventies. He drove a 1975 Chevy Monte Carlo, which the show's devoted fans nicknamed "Ol' Constitution."

The show would spawn a movie franchise, and the producers decided to freshen the look of the "Ol' Constitution" by this time using a 1979 Monte Carlo.

In Car Trek III: The Search for a Short-Cut, we caught a glimpse at the future of car design when we saw the "Excelsiorific" 1985 Ford Taurus, which was far sleeker and more modern-looking than anything that had come so far.

The show's producers went a step further when they put together a sequel show, Car Trek: The Next Gas-Station, jumping a whole twenty years to the mid-nineties. In accordance with this, they used a car a whole 20 model years in advance of the original "Constitution." This time, a curvier, larger, and more comfy car was used, the "Galaxy" 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora

This show was wildly successful, and between it and its numerous spinoff series and films a whole family of cars from about the same time would be introduced...

One was the smaller and sleeker lines of the "Intrepid" 2000 Ford Focus.

Another, the longer and still-sleeker "Sovereign" 2001 Chrysler 300M.

Often, the show's production staff would look for ways to create a unique-looking car. One way they came up with was to radically alter the back end of the cabin by removing the back roof altogether, resulting in something called a "convertible." One such car, a little older in vintage than the Galaxy-Aurora, was the "Akira" 1992 Chrysler LeBaron.

And then word came that there would be a new "Car Trek" show, taking place in the distant and primevial mid-fifties, and with a car as much older than the original as the "The Next Gas-Station" was ahead of it. Now, the fans had never actually seen a car from before the seventies, but by now the show's devotees had figured out a pattern to the design lineage of these cars... as time went by they got bigger and sleeker looking, while preserving the same basic shape. So they all guessed that the car in this show would look like this.

But, no, a picture of the car leaked, and it didn't look anything like that. It was a Plymouth, apparently from 1955.

And there was outrage online! "It looks all curvy and modern-looking," said one. "It's just a ripoff of the Akira-LeBaron," said another, "I mean, look, the entire arrangement of the back of the cabin is exactly the same!" "There's no way this could predate "Ol' Constitution," they all howled.

And they all lit torches and charged off into the deep dark forest, looking for the Big Bad Plagiarising Wolf named Eaves.

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"I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)


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Aethelwer
Frank G
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That post is beautiful.
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Mark Nguyen
I'm a daddy now!
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I'm still laughing. That was a wonderful perspective on the whole affair.

And honestly, this is just another example of how Paramount tries to give something the fans will like, and we ram it down their throats. It's clear that the fandom loves the Akira class - there are hundreds of fanboy "WHY DON"T U MAKE A SEREZ BOUT AN AKIUH CLASS SHIP????????" proposals that attest to it. So when TPTB gives them something that looks like one for a main ship even if only in general arrangement, we go nuts. Sow and reap, gents.

Regardless, I'm still gonna wait until we get a decent five-view or three-quarter view before rendering judgement on the ship. And certainly until after a few episodes air before judging the series on the basis of its ship.

Mark

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"This is my timey-wimey detector. Goes ding when there's stuff." - Doctor Who
The 404s - Improv Comedy | Mark's Starship Bridge Designs | Anime Alberta


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Siegfried
Fullmetal Pompatus
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The_Tom, that post was !@#$ing beautiful, man. Just really !@#$ing beautiful. You, sir, should be worshipped as a god.

I'm still laughing about that!


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TSN
I'm... from Earth.
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Hm... Would've been more accurate if, instead of a '55 Plymouth, you'd used another LeBaron, but w/ different rims and a different paint color... :-)
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Mark Nguyen
I'm a daddy now!
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Actually, when I was clicking the link to the diagram, I was half-expecting to see the Flintstones' family car.

Mark

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"This is my timey-wimey detector. Goes ding when there's stuff." - Doctor Who
The 404s - Improv Comedy | Mark's Starship Bridge Designs | Anime Alberta


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Wes
Over 20 years here? Holy cow.
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quote:
Originally posted by TSN:
Hm... Would've been more accurate if, instead of a '55 Plymouth, you'd used another LeBaron, but w/ different rims and a different paint color... :-)

I do belive his point was to demonstrate that, although the car from 1955 was more 'curvy' then the ones that came after it, it still predated it because 'curvy' isnt recent concept... apply this to the Akira/Akiraprise


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colin
Active Member
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Good illustrative analysis of the issue.
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AndrewR
Resident Nut-cache
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LOL! Great! Bernd should put this up at his site!?!

and

Akiraprise - PERFECT!

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"Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)

I'm LIZZING! - Liz Lemon (30 Rock)


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Bernd
Guy from Old Europe
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I had a good laugh about it, although I disagree about the punchline.

The_Tom must have fallen for a hoax. The new Car Trek car is actually an "Akira" 1957 Chrysler LeBaronWhoCares, with a chrome-plated bumper and white sidewall tires, ABS, airbags and GPS.


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Siegfried
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Ah, but in the Car Trek universe, we do not know when chrome-plated bumpers, white sidewall tires, antilock brakes, airbags, and global positioning devices were invented. We have references on the order of "hundreds of years" and "several decades," but General Motors has never told us when these options started being installed in its production models.
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Austin Powers
Slightly warped
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Aren't we all just crazy? I love it! Simply great.
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621

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A ragtop is a far more general feature of cars than is analagous of the Akira/Akiraprise.

We saw the Cheyenne and did not consider it a rip-off of the Constellation. We saw the Nebula and did not consider it a rip-off of the Miranda. That was because they shared only general design similarities and there was a visible lineage.

A convertible Lebaron and a convertible '57 Chevy are nowhere close to the similarity between Akira and Akiraprise.

[ July 09, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]



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If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.

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Siegfried
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Hey, Stingray. Your all but one of your pictures is coming up as a big ol' box with a red "X."
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
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yup, noticed. edited it right away, but figures somebody catches me in the act...

And it figures of all those pictures, the Miata is the one that shows up.

[ July 09, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]



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If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.

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