Now the hot trend for people who want to flaunt their wealth by looking poor is new cars that look as if they had been parked in the broiling sun for the past six or seven years.
As The New York Times reported recently, “A dull, flat matte finish for cars is increasingly coming into vogue, shaking up expectations for how a new car should look. What started as a fad among celebrities has trickled down to the well-heeled public, with people ready and willing to pay as much as thousands more for a car that, to an untrained eye, may appear as if it needs waxing.”
I saw one of those cars recently at a luxury car dealer I masochistically visit every once in a while to torture myself with confirmation that I never will be able to afford anything on the showroom floor (I think that’s the male version of women on a Walmart budget who ogle the jewelry at Tiffany’s). To my untrained eye, it looked a great deal like my first car, which was a formerly green ‘56 Chevy covered in gray primer. The sticker price was $102,365, which was $102,300 more than I paid for the Chevy.
You might think a car that looks as if it needs waxing should be cheaper than one that comes off the line with that new-car sparkle. You’d be wrong. Making a car look dull and old can add from $800 on a Hyundai to $6,800 for an Audi. But you’d save at the car wash, because the matte finish would be ruined by the brushes. So you’ll need to hand-wash it with special soaps and cleaning cloths. Otherwise it will lose its finish “and begin to look like a teenager’s blotchy face.”
Sounds like a lot of work to me. So I think I’ll just take a pair of scissors to my Target jeans, splash some paint on my Walmart sweater and park my shiny car out in the sun for the next six or seven years.
People will think I’m a millionaire.
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