[Editor’s Note: Cold Start is running in the afternoon because I forgot to publish it this morning. Sorry! – JT] My friend Brandon sent me some photos of an HHR he spotted in a parking lot in Michigan a few weeks back, and I have to admit that my initial reaction was to recoil. Look at all the cheesy badges just glued to that sheetmetal! Yikes! But a closer look brought me into the light, because I don’t hate this HHR. Actually, I kind of dig it:
The two-tone paint, steel wheels with dogdish center caps, the old-school stainless steel trim just below the beltline, the (Mercury?) hood ornament — it melds well with the HHR’s body shape and overall design. This shouldn’t be a huge surprise because, like its PT Cruiser competitor, the HHR was designed with retro styling cues; in fact, the old-school design was among the vehicles’ main selling points when the car hit the market in 2005. Still, I wasn’t expecting it to be possible to simply take parts off of 50+ year-old cars and just graft them on; the fact that this HHR pulls it off is just cool. Unrelated to the car above, I was curious to see if an HHR can pool off the woody look, so I googled it and found, on a site called PT Woody, that there are wood-trim kits available. I think it sort-of works, but the white/light blue two-tone car works a bit better in my eyes.
Anyway, as a big fan of the reliable, practical, reasonably-efficient, and and available-with-a-stick HHR I figured I’d show you that. Isn’t it ‘styling cues’, as in reminders, not ‘queues’ as in a line of waiting people? Now, it’s likely that the A-pillars are small-normal compared to today’s cars, but they were certainly big at the time. There are a couple dealerships in the midwest applying wraps to the newer F-series trucks that give them the two-toned look of the 90s, and I’m not talking about the stock Ford Heritage look that came out. If you haven’t seen them you need to google it. They hit the nostalgia button so hard it hurts. Here’s one https://www.kochfordlincoln.com/blogs/blog/ford-dealer-retro-truck-package-for-f-150 But nice job, it reminds me of those cheap Fords from the fifties with cardboard door cards and rubber mats and minimal chrome. The “woody” look isn’t to my taste, but it looks on on this car. I’m not crazy about the bit that extends in front of the headlights, but it’s fine on the doors and the aft section. GM only wishes people were lining up to get these. I think I recall Steamwhistle Brewery had some of these in their fleet. Much of their marketing and ‘look’ is about nostalgia for aging boomers.
