Car Parties…They ROCK!
Do you have a friend who works for a car manufacturing company? If you don’t, well, I suggest you make one pronto.
I’ve made quite a few friends from the motoring industry this year, and what I discovered was this: car parties rock hot ass.
I always scoffed at the idea of going to a shindig held by some corporation that made metal modes of transportation for a living. Let me demonstrate: Exhibit A: “Hey, let’s go to that Absolut Vodka event!”, then Exhibit B: “Hey, let’s go to the Christmas party of Toyota!” C’mon…no contest, right? If it’s a liquor event, then the bar list promises to be off the chain! A Japanese car manufacturing company party? Visions of ho-hum corpy types giving away keychains with the corporate logo as primo prize for the best karaoke rendition of “My Way” at a small function room wasn’t even the worst conjecture my steroidal imagination came up with.
And boy was I mistaken.
On the urging of a friend from Top Gear magazine, I relented and attended my first ever car party, the first in the slew of Christmas parties the car universe would dish out Q4 of 2007.
20 minutes into the thing, I had to peel my jaw off the floor—but in a good way. Small function room, my ass. These car companies would rent out entire floors, or would close out an entire resto for the night. They had the best prizes (for games and contests) AND the best giveaways just for being there!
By far the best car party I attended in 2007 was the one thrown by Volvo, whose sexy hatchback C30 just won Car of the Year. Pics are from the December 19 shindig at the roofdeck of Fully Booked at F.Boni H.Street.
And the food…the food! Car party buffet fare has been the best I’ve ever tasted at huge-scale events.
I’ve been used to pica composed mostly of half-day old toasted baguette with the thinnest smear of pesto. I knew better than to go to these things without grabbing dinner at the nearest MickeyD’s or tapa joint coz whatever pica I could get my hands on was gonna be the last I’d see for the night.
But not at these car parties. First of all, they served real food…as in hotel- or restaurant-catered spreads with chafing dishes you just never got to see the bottom of!
And the drinks, the drinks! When a car manufacturer says “open bar,” they do mean that exactly. I had forgotten what it felt like to just nurse a drink at these parties, usually because “open bar” in most of the parties I attended in the past had a footnote: “open bar until 10pm, and we only serve the cough syrup-tasting swill that is tonight’s sponsor…if you want a modest bottle of beer, you’ll have to pay for it…and pay dearly, because our small, exclusive lounge doesn’t retail anything at less than three digits…yes, even if it tastes just the same as the 16-peso beer in the supermarket.”
And probably the best thing? Seats. Just the fact that there are. Plenty of them in fact. No more huddling around a tall cocktail table the size of Shakey’s party-size pizza, plastering a smile that hides What Pure Pain Looks Like (something you get after 3 hours standing on nothing but stilettos).
Car parties…can’t wait to attend my next one!