The Accused
The Nissan Motor Company Limited
The charge
That the accused did wilfully and with malice aforethought manufacture very small low-powered cars and flagrantly market the same to immensely fat people with poor spatial awareness thereby preventing commuters from going about their rightful daily business.
The case for the prosecution
Ladies and Gentlemen, when Nissan USA president Yutaka Katayama introduced the compact pickup to America in 1959, he espoused a philosophy that was part Zen and part car aficionado: “Love cars, love people, love life.” When I was driving to this very court today I saw, and not for the first time, a hugely obese woman “driving” a Nissan Micra in the middle lane of the motorway at 40mph and I espoused a somewhat different philosophy. As there are likely to be children and people of finer sensibilities listening to this case, I will not repeat that particular philosophy here.
Suffice to say that the ghastly sight of some vast and lardy middle-aged female squeezed unceremoniously into a small tin and plastic wheeled box is not one that the eye welcomes so early in the day. Apart from the obvious visual enormity of the event, there is an altogether more sinister and indeed dangerous aspect to be considered. The viewer’s brain. Bereft of mental stimulation, the daily commuter will fall on the slightest curious incident like a pack of ravenous hyena on a wounded wildebeest. And this one is no exception. How did she get into that car in the first place? Given her relative bulk and the comparative tininess of the target space, the exercise was evidently not conducted by self alone.
So what fiendish accomplice, oiled and gloved, was responsible for squeezing and coaxing the behemoth into the Micra? How long did it take? Were wheels and pullies employed? Or large sticks and shoe-horns? Did a crowd of jeering small boys assemble to encourage the ingress? Which parts of respective anatomies came into contact to effect an entry? Hand on posterior? Like some appalling pastiche of Sartre, did it disappear right up to the elbow? What forces must have been at play!
And how would she be able to handle basic driving skills like steering when she clearly could not get her hands anywhere near the steering wheel, jammed against her voluminous folds of gut like it so clearly was. Had she perfected by way of necessity some kind of Tantric lower-abdominal muscle-control? And what of braking? The momentum of such a hideously disproportionate human frame encased in such a flimsy automobile careering along the Queen’s highway would surely not be halted by the mere application of rubber on metal. Presumably this goes a long way towards explaining precisely why a slow driving pace is required.
I think you will agree, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, that such thoughts are not the correct thoughts to be thinking when public road safety is of such obvious paramount importance.
In all the years that I have been kneeling at the feet of Genesius, I can safely say that I have never encountered such a depraved example of corporate barbarism as that displayed by the accused. The purveying of cancerous tobacco products, improperly-tested genetically-modified foodstuffs and even clackers pale into insignificance beside the considerable shadow of the Nissan Micra and its archetypal driver.
The case for the defence
Customer satisfaction levels are high.
Verdict
Guilty!
Sentence
Rarely have I had to listen to a case that so chills the marrow. Having considered punitive financial, custodial and indeed even mortal sentences, I am drawn inexorably to the most severe punishment that the law allows. I hereby sentence every senior executive within Nissan to drive a Nissan Micra until that day that he dies.