It’s Important to Earn Your Stripes

Wow…..I’d sure love to spend an afternoon with this turd discussing how annoying everything is……what a pile of garbage that article was. By the the way, it is “adorned” not “adored”.

…..and no, none of my cars have stripes.

I can empathize with the idea of a low profile performance car, I do believe that a performance oriented car (or driver…) should have other priorities than stripes, and I certainly don´t like stripes as a mere esthetical statement on ordinary cars… But despite all of my preferences, the idea that someone (or car…) should earn the right of having stripes sounds like a huge overestimation of a few lines painted on a hood… After all, it just stripes.

With all due respect, let’s be honest here. This has nothing to do with “earning” stripes; it’s just that you don’t like them aesthetically on street cars. Because you pose the question, “Were they put there by the factory? ” but it turns out that doesn’t really matter to you; you had the dealer remove the factory stripes on your 500 Abarth.

That’s perfectly fine, of course; it’s pointless to argue taste. And personally, I wouldn’t slap random, non-original stripes on a car. But I run one with factory stripes, which were painted on; they’re a characteristic of this particular homologation special. To suggest the car “didn’t earn them, because no street car possibly could” strikes me as a bit arrogant.

Because if you don’t distinguish between owner-added stripes and original factory ones, then you’re merely posing a subjective aesthetics question (“Are they ugly?”) or betraying your personal predilections (“What’s the point in drawing more attention to yourself?”). Again, perfectly fine. But that doesn’t turn it into a moral question of “earning” stripes.

In college I drove a ’65 Mustang GT. The stripes distinguished a true factory GT from the rest. They were part of the design of the model, and you could be assured there was a Hi-Po 289, factory disc brakes, and twice pipes through the rear, etc. I really never gave much thought to the stripes, however. I was more interested in driving and mechanics.

My parent used to shuttle me to school in a ’69 AMX. That car also had very pronounced stripes. That’s how the cars came. You wouldn’t expect it to be any other way. Earned? Not sure what you mean buy that. Does blowing off 427 Cobras equate to “earning” your stripes? Done.

Call me Old School, I guess, but the stripes weren’t the focus of the cars. They just happened to be there.

Earn? What is this, the military? Stripes are just fun and The Mouse wears its proudly on the track and street!

I could follow your train of thought and say you don’t deserve a sports car if you can’t drive. Do you really deserve that 911? My personal conviction is I don’t advertise more performance than I can deliver but I really don’t care to be an aesthetic nazi and set myself up as some kind of measuring rod for how people can express themselves with their vehicles. Don’t be that guy.