By Chase McFadden of Some Species Eat Their Young
PLANO, TX — In an attempt to alleviate the constant bickering amongst the Jones children, today Toyota unveiled a completely impractical Sienna prototype equipped with six front seats.
The vehicle is designed solely to minimize arguments over who gets to sit where, according to Toyota lead design engineer Dr. Carl Reigler.
“It’s hard to imagine that my team and I actually spent time and money designing this thing,” said Dr. Reigler, leaning against the Sienna prototype, slowly shaking his head. “I mean, we’re normally focusing our collective genius on creating cars that will set industry standards for efficiency and safety, you know? Trying to make the world a better place? But, oh no, those kids are arguing again, so we’ll just drop everything and create this freaking monstrosity. I hope they’re happy.”
Featuring six bucket seats placed side-by-side, the new Sienna — dubbed “The Rethinking Abstinence Edition” — is 22-feet wide, necessitating a pilot car escort and OVERSIZE LOAD banner hanging from the back bumper whenever it is driven.
As for efficiency, “Basically, it’s like navigating a billboard sideways down the highway,” stated Reigler, taking a pull from a small silver flask. “The windshield alone is the size of a glass pane from the observatory deck of the Sears Tower. I’d tell you the results from our wind tunnel testing but we couldn’t even fit the goddamn thing in the wind tunnel.
“I’m guessing it’ll get two miles per gallon, tops,” he added.
Regardless of its inefficiency, Toyota is hopeful that the new design will help with that point each school morning when the Jones brood heads out the front door — after several hundred reminders to get dressed, put shoes on, brush teeth and grab backpacks, the only four actions required of school-age children since forever — and the fighting begins.
“The footage we’ve seen would make Katniss Everdeen squeamish,” explained Dr. Reigler of the daily seating quell. “That 9-year-old girl? Vicious. The level of violence we’ve witnessed as those four fight over the front seat makes the average prison riot seem like a Mary Kay convention.”
In addition to the unique front seating design, Reigler and his team were also tasked with equipping the vehicle with enough cargo area to transport the combined gear of an expedition of 25 embarking on a trek up Everest.
“Sweet Jesus, how can they have that much stuff for one day?” Reigler wondered.
Toyota executives are hopeful that by shifting focus from manufacturing vehicles that actually make sense to a model that’s sole purpose is to shut the kids up, at least one parent will find serenity.
However, when asked for comment on the newly-designed Toyota, Mrs. Jones, the beleaguered mother of the four ungrateful little shits, stated, “They’ll just start fighting over who gets to sit in the best front seats. This solved nothing.”
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