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Emoticars

 Let your car drive angry for you!
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I don't know about all of you, but as a child, I always imagined that the front of a car kinda looked like a face. Maybe I just watched too much Herbie, the Love Bug. In any case, it's about time the automobile showed more expression, halfbakery style.

(Before submission, I chanced upon the half-baked "Mood cars" idea, but I felt this concept was different enough to merit a chance at acceptance and baked goods)

Let the other drivers on the road know exactly how you feel with Emoticars. This new breed of automobile will look and feel like the other industry standard cars on the market with one notable exception: Emoticars have the ability to wink, smile, frown, and more using an ingenious system to allow the car's appearance to accurately depict a human face. From a strechable grill to dialating pupils in the headlights to big bushy eyebrows that raise and lower, Emoticars have something for every situation.

Feeling mad at the world? Just turn the Emoticar knob to "upset" and the front of your car will make its transformation before your eyes. Watch as the corners of the grill turn down and the eyebrows lower meanacingly. Not mad enough for you? Use the intensity knob to adjust and fine-tune the emotion. "Upset" can easily become "enraged" with eyelid coverings that make the headlights look slit and fangs that retract out of the grill. Likewise, the same emotion can become merely "peeved" using the same intensity knob.

Additional emotional responses are annotation pending (up to you...)

—Lucky_Setzer, May 21 2002

U.S. Patent 6,757,593 http://patft.uspto....r=0&l=50&f=S&d=PALL
July 26 2004: Toyota has been granted a patent to almost exactly what you describe here. [krelnik, Oct 04 2004]

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       Yay! imood on wheels. I could have my car sitting in my work carpark scowling at my workplace.
—pottedstu, May 21 2002
   

       put some real teeth so we can nip at others bumpers. and of course the MOOD SWING button on the dash to switch from one extreme to the other.
—rbl, May 21 2002
   

       Mood swing wheel, surely?
—pottedstu, May 21 2002
   

       Just read in the NY Times that Toyota has been granted a patent for almost precisely what you describe here. They filed it in March of 2002, so I guess this doesn't qualify as prior art.
—krelnik, Jul 26 2004
   

       Hmmm. Looks like that patent may cover Cargazer, too.
—bristolz, Jul 26 2004
   

       Yeah, I first linked it on Cargazer, but I thought it was more appropriate to put it over here.
—krelnik, Jul 26 2004
   

       what about passive/agressive folks? wouldn't their cars be emoting a lie?
—elfling, Jul 26 2004
   

       wow, that patent is one surreal read.
—GutPunchLullabies, Jul 26 2004
   

       I read it the paper today as well.
—swimr, Jul 26 2004
   


 

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