The Cars of Santa Claus
As the calendar quickly flips to the end of the year, we enter that time period in which most people aren’t sure what day it is, office productivity plummets, and the big man in a red suit is on the minds of most in this part of the globe.
[Images: Dodge, Ram, Mazda]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
From a car fan’s point of view, it’s worth some entertainment points to pose the question of what would Santa drive were he to trade in that enormous red sleigh. Leave it to the gasoline sodden gearheads at Dodge to come up with what might be an obvious answer: an overpowered Hellcat with eight side pipes popping out of the car’s front fenders. Eight tiny reindeer?
No, how about eight huge exhaust tips instead? Sounds perfect. Wheels were replaced with a sort of integrated ski system, the struts of which in the rear looked suspiciously like Dodge’s double hash mark logo. Most of its roof and both doors were binned in favor of an open top and scalloped door area; after all, Santa needs to toss out presents pretty quickly if he’s going to get around the world in just one night.
Officially called the Redeye Express, we think this was a great use for a developmental mule which would have otherwise met an inglorious fate at the business end of a car crusher. Oh, one more thing: the build team is said to have cranked this thing out in just two weeks. They even went and added a set of antlers to the Hellcat logo.
Back in the real world, one could make an argument for any number of regular traffic vehicles - so long as it’s red, of course. Ram does a couple of tremendous reds in its heavy duty pickup truck line, with Flame Red on rigs like the Power Wagon and Molten Red showing up on the Limited Longhorn.
This author thinks Santa would do best to rock a Power Wagon since he would likely be able to make good use of that winch in order to heave his way over the roof to make such a clatter. But there’s also a case to be made for a one ton dually simply on behalf of payload for all those presents.
If a pickup truck isn’t suitable during his downtime, Mazda has made bank with its Soul Red Crystal metallic paint, a hue loved by the brand’s own designers and many customers alike. Those in the know say it is actually made up of three layers of coating on top of the base primer, each with their own purpose which permits light to ‘bounce around’ before registering in a human’s eye.
