What Car Screams 'I Peaked In High School'?

Apparently, I had my 20th high school reunion...two years ago. Whoops. I didn't even notice it fly by. Of course, I didn't go to the ten year, and I deleted Facebook so, yeah, I'm free. I'm finally free. But sometimes people hold on to the Wonder Years for a little too long. While they usually grow up to become nurses, cops, real estate agents, or AI programmers, they never let go of that brief, shining moment when they were somebodies. And nothing defines a high schooler quite like what car they're driving. 

With the announcement of a Captain America-themed Jeep Wrangler for the America250 "celebration" I got to thinking; what's a car that screams "I peaked way too early in high school?" No shade to Jeep of course (of course, of course) but this is the car for the person who never grew out of the late 2000s/early 2010s. The kind of person with Jeep Wrangler money to burn (those suckers aren't cheap!) but is still stuck 15 years ago in a world where the Marvel Universe defines the culture. What I want to know is, what car feels like this for you? What car screams "my glory days are behind me and I'll start reminiscing about them with as little as a single Miller Light in my system." 

My parents move us out of the city and into an exurb punctuated by lakes. We went from driving on an semi-orderly grid of mile roads bisected by avenues to long curving roads that hugged shoreline after shoreline. If you were to look at the student parking lot of my high school, you'd see trucks as far as the eye could see. Newer ones too: there were a lot of nouveau riche types in my graduating class, and that meant new trucks in teenagers' hands. 

Nowadays, when I see a Ram truck on the road, I get the hell out of its way. This is the truck of the tailgater, the truck of the no-turn-signal merge, the truck with lots of towing and off road capacity with next to zero opportunities to engage those capabilities. Now when I see one, I think "this is someone who still talks about high school cliques at the bar." 

I even think Ram's "badge of protest" – which is my favorite marketing gimmick of all time — is very high school. It's like how I rebelled against my mom in high school by wearing really dark lipstick, but she was still the one buying me the lipstick. I sure showed her! It's that kind of mentality that makes Ram trucks the official car of "peaked too early" for me. What car does the same for you?