America Reaches Peak Cupholder - It Can't Go Further Than This
Has a nation ever been thirstier? Are we so blessed with beverages that we now assume every occupant of a vehicle is double-fisting it?
The answer, it seems, is “yes.” Otherwise, Ford wouldn’t roll out a center console cupholder sporting four drinky holes. If the Waltons and the Brady Bunch were real, instead of being forever trapped in the ’70s, they’d weep (with joy) at the sight of it.
Ford’s press release for the new “Two-Into-Four-Barrel” cupholder oozes machismo. The versatile, transformable cupholder is a real performance unit, we gather. (Your thirst will go from zero to quenched in no time at all!)
Offered on the upcoming 2017 Super Duty, the quad cupholder easily turns into a dual cupholder by sliding the tray to to the right. This frees up copious lunch — erm, cargo — space that can be filled with Chinese takeout cartons, a bag of sandwiches, cereal, or a decent-sized loaf.
Aimed (officially) at work truck buyers, the release mentions the “extensive global research” Ford conducted into cupholder technology. It also says the next-generation Super Duty will sport up to 10 cupholders, which might be a cupholder record (worth breaking! Get on that, rival automakers!) To sum up, if your coffee is too hot and you’re sitting in a 2017 Super Duty, chances are there’ll be another one kicking around that’s just right.
The Blue Oval claims the sliding quad cupholder will “ensure Ford Super Duty customers have plenty of fuel to stay on top of their game” — a statement that tacitly encourages energy drink use and interest in rock climbing.
More by Steph Willems
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This is laugh-worthy, but it makes sense for a work truck. The two roughnecks working out of it all day each can have their coffee for the AM and their Gatorade for the afternoon, a half gallon each. It gets hot out there in the fields, and some guys have no other refuge during a long, hot workday. For the rest of us, not so much.
Simple yet functional. I want nothing more in terms of a cup holder than a plastic molded hole. I still cringe thinking about those cupholders that Ze Germans included in the 1999 VW Jetta our family owned...you know, the spring loaded cupholders with numerous springs, clips and chintzy plastic parts that was designed by some wizard in a lab yet implemented in such a way that it held together like a five year olds popsticle stick school art assembled with a glue stick. It was also nefariously placed so that when (not if) after the ten or twelfth use of said cupholders would break it would lead to drink spillage directly down the radio and all entertainment switchgear.