What's Wrong With This Picture: Ersatz Ersatz Edition
Tommy Hilfiger… My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes, and doesn’t know, but suspects in her heart that this in fact what accounts for his long ubiquity.
— William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I must have seen it out of the corner of my eye; it scratched at my consciousness the way a forgotten appointment or a half-remembered song will. Turn. Stop. Drive back. I went into the nearest building and asked to talk to the owner. He told me that he did it as a bit of inside joke. His company ran a Daytona Prototype with “Lexus” power, so he felt that he should drive a Lexus. The only difficult part was getting the L-in-circle badge to fit properly, but even that wasn’t too tough.
I will say this: the badges don’t really look out of place. There isn’t all that much difference between an RX and a Santa Fe when you get right down to it. How long until Hyundai knuckles down and fights Lexus head-on with a Genesis CUV? Would any of you buy it? Would you recommend it? How much of a discount does there need to be? What if no discount is necessary?
More by Jack Baruth
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I am twelve years old and what is this
Thankfully I knew of the Hyundai handle on the rear hatch so that gave it away but I could not at first recall which model it came from. Otherwise, it's a nice looking, but blah tush and car, be it a Hyundai or Lexus, conservative and anonymous. The Kia Soul has more style than this thing.
This one almost slipped past me... and I drive a Santa Fe. Funny how this sort of stunt used to make a mockery of Hyundai owners, whereas today it kinda makes a bigger mockery of Lexus owners.
As Kanye wrote: "Couldn't afford a car so she named her daughter Alexis"