Honey, Would You Hold My Drink Please?

I've been putting this SOTC on the back burner for awhile now, because I know it's something that's a very touchy subject for everyone. And I'm sure a lot of you are going to send flame mail over my way. But this is something I've just got to say already. One of the more common e-mails I get sounds like this:

"Eric, I've got an 198x Cougar (or Thunderbird) and want to find a way to put a cupholder in. Any suggestions?"

You know what I usually tell them?
"Stuff your drink between the console and the passenger seat. Works just the same."

It's like this, folks: Cupholders suck.

You heard me right. Cupholders are the ruination of the automobile driving experience over the last two decades. We've gone from a nation of proud car drivers to a nation of wusses because we think we need to have a spot to put our drinks as we drive.

Now we've all had the experience of going to the drive-thru in the ol' Cat or 'Bird, ordering value meals or the like, and having absolutely nowhere to put our drinks. Well, that's not always true. If you're in the car by yourself, you have the choice of A) sadistically holding an ice-cold beverage between the legs, B) stuffing the beverage in the passenger seat somewhere, or C) having to ask for a bulky drink tray. Lucky owners with consoles, if they're empty, have the option of D) putting the drink in there. But that's really about it. Now if you have a passenger, all the better--they're your cupholder. Problem solved. Still, it becomes less than practical to drive safely and have a 20-oz. drink chilling your thighs, or in your other hand. Plus the risk of spilling onto the seats and/or carpeting is always there. It would be rather convenient to have someplace to put the drink. And you have to also admit that when you get in someone else's car, and they have a cupholder, you find a way to put something in it, even if it's not a drink. The only reason you do this is because, naturally, you don't have one yourself.

But the whole problem with cupholders, or lack thereof in our case, is that they're drilled into the American public's minds that they're NEEDED for your vehicle to be accepted. Notice that I said the word "American". This is a problem unique to our country, the land of the Big Gulp and quickie-mart 79¢ monster sodas (or "pop" as we call it up here in the Northeast). The powers-that-be at the major auto manufacturers have decided, over the course of roughly 20 years, to listen to the marketing people and put increasingly larger and more plentiful cupholders inside every single vehicle they sell. The notion really picked up once minivans became popular with the ubiquitous soccer moms across the good ol' U.S. of A. Now you hear, "Our Minivan X has a total of 20 cupholders!" Did you say TWENTY? For Pete's sake, how the hell many do you need in one vehicle? Wouldn't one or two work just as well?! How many times would one family REALLY fill all 20 cupholders? If they can....all I have to say is, they're some serious gluttons.

And it seems that somewhere along the line, auto companies started touting the safety of having cupholders. Safety, you ask? Well, if you happen to get in an accident, the theory is that the cupholder will prevent your soda container from becoming a flying projectile. But you know something, even your radio knob can become a projectile if the car's hit hard enough. Besides, if you have something other than a drink in the cupholder, like, say, loose change, then it does no bloody good. More recently, cupholders have doubled as the receptacle for the "smoker's package", which is a fancy way of saying, "We're too cheap to put a real ashtray in this car so we'll just take up the cupholder for that." Even I, a non-smoker, take offense to that. Ashtrays have been a part of American cars for a long, long time and now cupholders have come along and even ruined that. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: the only place where loose change belongs is the ashtray, not some pseudo-ash receptacle/cupholder combination waste-of-good-space.

The rage now is to see how many different sized beverage containers can fit in one cupholder. Yes folks, they actually spend money on this. "Our new, improved cupholders can hold even a Big Gulp!" Well, whooptie-doo, that's great. Glad to hear you've figured that out, but can't squeeze 15 more horsepower out of the engine. Excellent use of funds there, huh?

I can't help but think of how Europeans think of us and our obsession with cupholders. They've got to be laughing their heads off at us. Now they're not immune either, as a growing number of Mercedes, BMW's, and yes, even PORSCHES now have available cupholders in Europe as well as in the States. Still, in the global view of things, we're far behind Europe (and Asia in some respects) as to the importance of the cupholder and the role it plays in vehicles. European cars, in general, are spartan but built for reliability. They may not be fancy but they get the job done, and done well. They don't need no steenkin' cupholder. The purpose of an automobile, in their eyes, is to get you from Point A to Point B efficiently (and hopefully dry in the process). Over in Asia, they've learned very quickly what Americans want and have widely accepted the cupholder as an integral part of the automobile's interior package. But they don't stop refining and enhancing the drivetrain in the process.

And that's where the U.S. falters. While you have to realize that it's not easy to make a car in this day and age (what with the government breathing down your neck every step of the way), it is possible to do many things well at one time. And apparently the time that it takes to create the ultimate cupholder is time that cannot be spent over in engineering to kick a few more ponies out of the engine. We've been waiting over 5 years now for the 4.6L Mustang GT to wake up in the power department and finally compete with the aging F-bodies. How many power increases has there been in 5 years? Two---one in 1999, and one for 2001 in the limited-edition Bullitt. That's it. In that time, Ford has redesigned the console to add--you guessed it---more cupholders. And when Ford does figure out how to get more power out of the 4.6, guess what? Once again, GM ups the ante in the F-bodies and Corvette. Meanwhile, we have a 200+hp Windstar MINIVAN. Yes, a minivan that can run neck-in-neck with a 190-hp V6 Mustang, and probably come close to the V8 Mustang. So I guess if you like cupholders and horsepower together, you have to buy a damned soccer-mom-mobile. It's all just so frustrating.

Now our cars were designed in the good old days...I'm talking the 1980's. If you were barely alive during this era, you missed the last of a great generation. There were no cars with airbags, antilock brakes, automatic seat belts, or 27 different warning lights. Back in those days, you died like a real man---through the windshield. And so, there was no pressing need to install a cupholder. Sometimes GM cars had those two circular indents in the inside lid of the glove box that sort of was meant for holding drinks (but in typical GM fashion, it comes at the price of draining your battery with the glove box light). It just wasn't a priority or even something people wished they had. You simply did without it. But once the rage caught on, apparently a wave of mass hysteria swept through the auto-buying public and they demanded that automakers start finding ways of placing beverage container holders inside every single U.S vehicle.

What's my point? Our cars never had cupholders and they were never meant to have them, period. Some people (including BOB, you know who you are BOB!) have gone to great lengths to make another automaker's cupholder fit our dashes. And that's all well and good, should you wish to have that sort of thing.

As for me, I'm a purist, especially when it comes to the convertible. Took the a/c out, and the top doesn't go up anywhere between May and October. I'm not one of those ultra-dorks that puts the top down and the windows up either. And the heater never goes on; if it gets cold, too bad...that's what jackets are for. And one other thing is certain: my car will never--NEVER--have any sort of cupholder. That's what the space between the console and passenger seat is for.

Besides, spilled soda on my newly upholstered $1,000 seats keeps things interesting.

Until next time,

 < Back to SOTC Main

[ top ]