The Car of Tomorrow is a 1951 Tex Avery MGM Cartoon. It is the second in Tex Avery's Tetralogy of Tomorrow, which satirized technology of the future.
Within a show room, a narrator describes all the latest car models that will be available to the public, each having their own special features ranging from undentable fenders (though the rest of the car is still damageable), adjustable seats, talking turn signals, and even one for literal Backseat Drivers. However, some of them come equipped with a few bad puns, including seal beam headlights.
Tropes featured in your Car of Tomorrow:
- Backseat Driver: A car designed for them has the wheel and controls in the backseat. It even provides the trope image.
- Black Comedy:
- There's a car designed with pedestrians in mind... with extra wide bumpers. "Just let 'em try to get away!" To top it off, it also has a glass bottom so you can see if the victim was a friend of yours.
- One car has a built-in automatic shaver (robot arms that handle a straight razor). "But the road has to be pretty smooth." The car hits a rough patch, after which the driver steps out and takes off his hat to the camera... along with his head.
- Cleavage Window: A car designed in Paris features a bosom-shaped front bumper, complete with a daring plunging neckline that exposes the engine's fan.
- Drives Like Crazy: Multiple examples. One woman driver nearly crashes her car with the side of her garage if not for the whole thing lifting off the ground precisely to prevent that. The car with the indestructible fenders is smashed to hell (but the fenders remain intact) because of a valet who treats the parking lot like a demolition derby ring. The man who accidentally guillotined himself with the automatic straight razor did not do himself any favors by taking the rough patch of road at high speed. And many others.
- Exact Words: There's a car with fenders that cannot be dented. The same can't be said for the rest of the car.
- Impossibly-Compact Folding: One car is designed to alleviate parking hassles, as it can be folded down small enough to match the size of a wallet.
- Lame Pun Reaction: The gag with the seal beam headlights (seals come barking out of them) is met with "Oh, no!" from the narrator, who crosses out the screen.
- Land of Dragons: China's most popular model is half car, half rickshaw.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: First car shown has room for every member of the family. The mother-in-law's is an isolated dome in the rear.
- Off with His Head!: What happens to the driver when he's being shaved on a rough stretch of road.
- Tipis and Totem Poles: Popular with the Indians is a convertible model in which the roof is a tipi.
- Thrifty Scot: There's a "thrifty Scotchman's model" gag, where the car is pedal operated.
- Unnecessarily Large Interior: The car model with a step-down interior, in which you enter by stepping down... way down.
- Visual Pun: Several, such as:
- One model that still has bugs in its motor.
- A car with a 200-horsepower engine with actual horses under the hood
- The aforementioned seal headlights.
- A fishtail model.
- A model with a motor in the rear — as in being dragged behind the car.
- Wall Crawl: The Hill Climber Special, equipped with tires that convert into suction cups that can climb any hill.
- Weaponized Car: One of the cars presented is designed to facilitate pedestrian... casualties, with a street-wide bumper and glass bottom for the driver to see if the casualties were not friends of them.
- Women Drivers:
- A car that sounds out the turn signals; when a woman is on the wheel, it says "Turning left... no, right... no, left..." as the woman waves around her hand trying to signal.
- To accommodate so that the wife won't smash up the car pulling in, there's a garage that's been designed to raise up off the ground to allow her in safely.
