Each week I bring you the top stories in the auto industry along with my commentary or sometimes amusing thoughts about the craziness that goes on in the world of cars.
Stories you’ll find today:
10-Foot Spaces Because Costco Knows You Can’t Park Straight. Costco’s parking lots are basically the eighth wonder of the world, designed with such precision you’d think NASA had subcontracted the job, because unlike the war zones masquerading as lots at other retailers, Costco somehow cracked the code with 10-foot-wide spaces that make parallel parking feel like landing a plane on a football field, double-striped lines that say “we know you can’t drive straight but we love you anyway,” and aisles so wide they could host a monster truck rally without disturbing the guy in a Corolla trying to strap down a kayak with bungee cords, and that’s before you even get to the cart corrals, which are so plentiful they look like cattle pens for the steel herd, complete with employees wrangling strays so you don’t suddenly meet a runaway trolley head-on at three miles per hour. The genius here isn’t just asphalt and paint, it’s psychology, because Costco knows their customers are pushing carts the size of U-Hauls stuffed with industrial shrimp cocktails and enough granola bars to feed a middle school, and you can’t squeeze that circus through the same narrow grid that other chains give you, so they built a retail Autobahn where every spot feels like a prime spot and traffic flow actually makes sense. Stay calm parking challenged Car Pro readers, because every design choice keeps the chaos contained, and keeps you buying in bulk instead of screaming at a stranger for blocking you in. And let’s not ignore the strategy, because Costco wants you happy before you even step inside, since no one impulse-buys a kayak or a $1,200 TV after circling for 25 minutes and praying to the asphalt gods but make parking frictionless and suddenly you’re cheerfully shoving a sectional sofa into your Escalade like it’s just another snack run. It’s retail sorcery, it’s asphalt wizardry, it’s the one place in America where your parking space isn’t a passive-aggressive test of patience but a warm embrace saying, “Relax, you’ll make it home with your sanity intact and maybe a rotisserie chicken.” Welcome to Costco, come for the savings, stay because you can actually park without considering a dash-cam insurance claim.
Dodge Charger Breaks Record for World’s Longest Left Turn. A group of YouTubers in Ohio decided that the best way to test human endurance, mechanical durability, and the patience of local residents was to take a red Dodge Charger and drive it around a public roundabout for 24 straight hours, completing 1,809 laps and racking up nearly 489 miles of dizzying circles, and while that alone sounds absurd enough, they went full chaos mode with emergency lights, “certified test vehicle” decals, and even a “How’s my driving?” hotline that fans actually called. To keep things interesting, they replaced the windshield washer fluid with sour milk, pulled goofy challenges from a hat every 200 laps like running a lap on foot or driving a lap in reverse, and even refueled on the fly by leaning out the window with a jug of gas, because nothing says responsible car culture like NASCAR pit stops performed at a traffic circle. They swapped drivers and passengers with strict one-minute allowances, did a seven-minute tire rotation mid-run, and somehow managed to avoid any police intervention, which is shocking since Ohio law enforcement is usually quicker to ticket you for a lane change than reward you for an endurance stunt. In the end, the Charger survived, the drivers survived, the roundabout survived, and the internet got a 24-hour video that proves sometimes the dumbest ideas are also the best ones. Call it the world’s roundest burnout, or maybe Top Gear meets Dairy Queen, but either way, it’s proof that if you give car guys too much free time, they’ll turn a traffic circle into Daytona.
When GPS Says ‘ETA: Two Weeks’ and It’s Not Joking. In 2010, China turned the concept of traffic from an annoyance into a lifestyle when a 12-day, 100-kilometer gridlock formed on the G110 highway heading toward Beijing, stranding thousands of trucks and cars in the world’s longest documented jam, where drivers crawled forward at a pace so slow they averaged about one kilometer a day, which means a motivated turtle could have beaten them to the city. The jam started when construction bottlenecks collided with an overload of coal trucks headed to the capital, and instead of moving freight they built what amounted to a mobile campground of misery, complete with entrepreneurs selling bottled water at 15 times the normal price and instant noodles for triple, proving once and for all that even in the middle of nowhere capitalism finds a way. Some unlucky souls sat in the same spot for up to five days, creating the kind of road trip memories no one wants to scrapbook, and reports said locals showed up just to gawk at the sea of stranded vehicles, as if watching a giant parking lot breathe in unison was entertainment. After 12 agonizing days the traffic finally cleared, but not before cementing its place in history as the slowest commute ever recorded, the only road trip where the highlight was finding out your engine still started, and the ultimate reminder that if you think your daily rush hour is bad, at least it doesn’t require rationing noodles or negotiating with scalpers for a bottle of water.
NYPD Official Turns Fender Bender Into Career Ender. The NYPD’s head of traffic enforcement, Franklin Sepulveda, is in the spotlight for allegedly turning a minor fender bender into a major scandal when he sideswiped a parked car back on April 3, then allegedly told a subordinate to file a false report claiming the damage occurred in a police lot, which might have worked if Internal Affairs didn’t have the pesky habit of checking surveillance cameras and confronting people with inconvenient facts. Sepulveda, a 38-year department veteran who pocketed nearly $200,000 last year, built his reputation on handing out discipline to officers who so much as sneeze wrong behind the wheel of a squad car, so naturally he figured the rules didn’t apply to him because what’s the point of being the traffic boss if you can’t make your own rules. When Internal Affairs investigators rolled in with footage that contradicted the cover story, the whole scheme crumbled faster than a New York bagel in weak coffee, and suddenly the guy who tells everyone else how to drive is now being accused of hiding his own bad one. Union reps are livid, with Marvin Robbins pointing out the gall of a man who routinely punishes cops for bent bumpers allegedly trying to sweep his own crash under the rug, which is about as hypocritical as it gets. Meanwhile, City Hall is stuck with the optics of a top traffic cop making a mockery of accountability, adding yet another headache to an administration already juggling plenty. For Sepulveda, the whole episode is shaping up to be a career-defining reminder that in New York, the only thing harder to escape than gridlock is your own bad judgment caught on tape.