Curious Case of Conservative Cars

Ten thousand corollas litter Lagos streets, with just two horn notes and barely seven colours between them.

Ascend to more luxurious altitude, and there’s hardly any variety either. 

In a city of well over two thousand Range Rovers and G-wagens, not even one ricer has been spotted.

Why so boring ?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Look around your favourite neighborhood; there's a reason everything fits in the mediocre concrete monoliths spliced across the country. 

Modern developments seem to have forgot the whole colonial episode, losing all the recipes of tropical function informing form and space design. Gardens, Courtyards and balconies, swiped away. Gable roofs trimmed to get with the modernist trend. 

What do you mean colour pallette - we don't do that here. Bleach it white.

But boring buildings are not really a problem anyway - you spend all day split between school run traffic, office hours, and closing time go slow. 14 hours between driving out and returning after sundown - yes, You.

Why are our cars - the beating heart of our eat- move -sleep routines - so square ?

Word on the street is that all the ingenuity has been lavished on getting the bloody cars in. legally or otherwise - 🌚 

Have you tried shipping goods in ?🤨

If the wharf rats don’t get you in time, their gray-uniformed jailers most definitely will.

Then there’s that Apapa port road... 😶

Hey HEY! Hold it there now.

"Practically everything else comes through the one port too" you grumble.

Well we’re not all dressed alike, wearing long perforated white knee length stockings and leather brogues -  so what gives 🤷🏽‍♀️ ?

While we’re here, If you’re still strutting that garish rainbow socks  🌈 contraption from 2009, then you’re beyond redemption, and you can dive to the comment section right now!

Still, if we’re staying on brand, where are the freaks ?

It’s not an issue of form.

Ok, goods come in fast, and in order, like Lekki toll lines 👀.

Cars have cleared customs.

Now what?

Why so much of a muchness ?

Artisanal and user tinkering is rife everywhere else except our roads. The Nairobi Matatu is widely known for this. 

Delete those duotoned city buses & taxi that comes to mind.

That Lambo Urus flown-in the other day will most likely stay white and stock.

All the Cullinans stay the same factory spec black, blue and white like the Range Rovers before them.

Let’s go on a thought experiment.

Say a mannequin’s height is a make-shift originality scale.

Your stock G-wagen comes in around waist - high, and corolla is the floor.

Put a snake skin wrap on that 'rolla, and it grows up to your ankles.

Put flame spitters on the AMG quad pipes, and it grows up to belly button.

You get me.

okay - let's dive into the real world now.

The totem pole has a million hits knee high or less, and is quite scanty at the top.

Car-spotting has built a throne of Instagram likes for itself, and million-dollar garages are more of the filtered norm. 

Light mod communities also popped up with the first wave of returnees after Goodluck that year, offering richer options of wheels, wings, body raps and interiors. The Abuja drift community is also LIT!

Still, the machines are just as prescribed.

One Lamborghini to get your heart racing again.

No tweaks, stripes, or fire-spitting pipes...that’s too much racing.

One of the most snapped cars in the Republic is an orange Challenger in stock trim.

Not even a goddamn yeehaw can be heard faintly.

Take Dino, our friendly neighborhood même generator, afro-trap upcoming artiste, video vixen, supercar connoisseur, and retired Senator of course.

For all his Power-Rangers’ pageantry, a testament to deftly-curated artifice is screaming all the way from the backyard. Vintage and modern, exotic and *insert obligatory G-wagen*, his garage is years of calendar pages.

Not even a stray Toyota in sight !

Mulsanne after Long wheelbase Autobiography Range Rover.

His brother-in-drama, is equally at home in a pristine vintage Benz. Even old fartsRoyal Fathers - Emirs and Oba’s alike - pull up in Old English Luxury only - stew of Phantoms and Mulsannes.

So the thought experiment totem pole measures height, and everyone stopped growing at 5, with a few unlucky adults here and there.

Again - where are the freaks ?

 

The disco-lit floorboard lights, la cucaracha horn notes, dancing hood-rat suspension kits, lifted bro trucks, lowriders...

The spinners rims fad didn’t outlast the shorter Hummer H2 era.

It doesn't look brighter with the silent vanilla tesla season upon us.

No your soft top solara doesn’t count FFS.

Lift kits are rarer than clean gutters - word to Lekkoyi link bridge: longest stretch of neat sidewalk in Lagos™️. This budget Atlanta barely looks the part from drone shot when cats are out and its 5 decent clubs are dialed up to 11.

Let’s get our ducks in a row shall we ; why so boring ?

Why is car-buying such a vanilla monoculture ?

There’s hardly any banking at the bottom or median income levels, so financing isn’t narrowing anyone’s options.

On one hand you’re neck deep in corolla-camry's, but that’s par for the course.

No one expects segun from KPMG to thunder down ozumba in a demuffled exhaust rat-rod. 

Why are Weekend cars here so safe ?

Some say the menace of uncooked technical services is the theme around these parts. Undelivered jobs and cover-up lies make tailors and mechanics come alive from within.

But that's beside the point, as modifications are bolt-on. If they could rebuild salvage cars that come in everyday, a few welds won't spoil their lunch.

It’s not form, certainly not cheddar.

It’s almost as if every top-dollar supercar, and a million more Jap econoboxes make it to our shores...then something interesting happens.

The gods - Oh the gods must be blamed !!

Ogún lakaye, god of Iron...stopper of oversized rims and lift kits.

For all his mysterious silence during the iron-shackled shame of transatlantic slave-shipping , the deity of clanging edifice is reborn, and actively keeping our cars conservative.