Drivers, lock your windows and turn on your Apple CarPlay. Halloween is upon us, a time for jovial jack-o’-lanterns, smiling trick-or-treaters and sugary candies. Each year on October 31, the thin veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is drawn back, as adherents celebrate the Celtic festival Samhain, and the spirits of the dead return to earth.
It’s a magical time of year.
Some keep the season festive by dressing up as their favourite vehicles. Attend any costume party and you’re bound to find a few Lightning McQueens and the odd nerd dressed as demonic Plymouth Fury from Stephen Kings’s Christine. Some motorists go further and dress their cars up. There are plenty of websites offering tips on how to costume your car. If you want to keep it simple, buy some fake eyelashes and attach them to your headlights. Want to turn your ride into the General Lee, the 1969 Dodge Charger stock car from the Dukes of Hazzard? The DIY A/C-repair manufacturer A/C Pro has the answer.
“Just use washable paint to create an ‘01′ on each side, and possibly write ‘General Lee’ above each door,” advises one car repair website. “Forget about including the original car’s rooftop rebel flag.” It’s too hard to paint and too “controversial.”
Others celebrate “trunk or treat.” They park their cars in the driveway and open up the back. Imagination is the only limit. You can fill your trunk with gravestones, zombies, demonic clowns or, if you really want to terrify trick-or-treaters, load it with National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration reports on self-driving technology.
Whenever I’m trying to come up with a costume idea, whether it’s for myself or my Mini Cooper Countryman, I always ask the same question: “What would the Lady Gwyn – a headless Celtic woman decked in white who, accompanied by a pitch-black pig, pursues hapless nocturnal wanderers – do?”
I always get the same answer: “She and the pig would get creative.”
Forget dressing your car up as the 1972 Ford Club Wagon from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor from Ghostbusters. Here are the three most frightening car-costumes guaranteed to terrify fellow drivers.
Parking hog
These drivers take two spots when one would suffice. It’s their world and we’re just living in it.
How to dress: If you have a driveway, simply paint a yellow line down the centre. Park with the line running under the middle of your car. Next, put on a dunce cap, smear yourself with mayonnaise and dance around your car singing (to the tune of Blondie’s new wave classic “Call Me): “Hate me! I parked on the line. You can hate me, hate me, any, any time. Hate me! Cause I drive. You can hate me any day or night. Hate me!”
The stunt driver
These are the fellows who get arrested for going 180 km/h in a 60 km/h zone, and sometimes their recklessness injures people. What’s most frustrating about these people is they normally suffer no consequences. They get a fine, a temporary suspension and then they’re back on the road endangering lives.
How to dress: Park your car in your driveway or on the street. Now strip naked and put on an adult diaper. The goal is to be an unlikeable version of Baby New Year. Buy a large pacifier at a costume shop and write the words “Stunt Driver” on a sash which you sling over your shoulder. Now, sit on your car’s roof making engine noises, periodically pausing to exclaim, “Look at me, I’m a big boy! I go vroom, vroom! I drive a pimped-out Camry!”
Distracted driver
These motorists have eyes on the screen and never the street. A high-tech version of old-fashioned drunken drivers, they kill and maim, but hey, they never miss a text.
How to dress: Park your car and place flashlights on the floor of the front seat shining upward to illuminate the driver. Next, have someone staple-gun a mobile phone to your forehead. There will be some blood. Spend Halloween spooking trick-or-treaters. Call 911 once you start to feel dizzy.
These are few to get you started. There are plenty more to be tried. Just as there is no end to the ghastly driving, there is no shortage of scary car costumes.
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Andrew Clark