Car Mat As Fashion Statement

A couple of months ago, Jan and I bought a new car.  It was about time.  The old Pontiac was groaning at over 100,000 miles and was having to go into the shop about once a month for this damn thing or the other.

When we bought the new car, it came with the same crummy floor mats that most new cars have.  The thin, cheap rubber backing with the synthetic fuzzy rug stuff on the front.  Oh, you can upgrade the floor mats, but who the hell spends the extra 500 dollars to do that?  I don't like buying my car mats on easy monthly payments along with the rest of the car.

Up here in Northern Illinois, the television and radio are peppered with ads for a certain company who touts made-in-the-USA, precision-cut car floor mats.  I don't normally buy anything I see or hear in ads, particularly when the company carpet bombs the airwaves.  But this time I did have some interest.  So, we decided to try the company out and bought a car mat for the back storage area of the car, which is a compact SUV.  It arrived in a couple of days ... and it fit ... perfectly!

Emboldened by the success of my experience, I ordered front floor mats from the same company.  Again, they came within a few days ... and again they fit perfectly, unlike anything we'd had in a car or truck before.

Big fucking deal, huh?  But wait ...

The car came with hands free telephone.  If you had a bluetooth phone, it would sync in with the radio and if you got a call on your phone, it would come through the radio and you could talk without holding the phone.  Hands free, but you still have to find the receiver button on steering wheel and you're still distracted when you talk while you drive.

But anyway, for some reason Jan's phone wouldn't sync up with the car.  Normally, I don't think this would have bothered her ... but my phone did.  So this drove her crazy and she began obsessing about it.  She tried a dozen times to sync the phone up.  She even convinced the wireless carrier to give her another phone.  Still nothing.

Yesterday, in a last ditch attempt to have the same thing I did; hands free in the car, she went to the dealership.  Well, long story short, she had pissed something up and they fixed it.  Now she's all happy because her phone works in the car ... just like mine.  What a crybaby ...

But while she was there, the two tech guys who were working on the phone connection started talking about the floor mats.  They were transfixed with the fucking floor mats and how well they fit.  They even asked Jan if they could open the back hatch and look at that floor mat.  They went on for 10 minutes about how well the floor mats fit and how nice they looked.

This was weird.  But to each their own.

Actually, they are pretty cool floor mats.  And if you want to know the name of the company, it's WeatherTech.  Their mats aren't cheap, but they're pretty damn good.  And after all, who doesn't like a couple of mechanics gushing over how nice your floor mats look?

By the way, I don't see this so much of a commercial as a public service.  Plus, maybe I can get these guys to give me a deal on some back seat floor mats, which I still need.

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