Brown fans hit – Unrest at the BCAS

For some time now, I’ve enjoyed the corner of the internet that brandishes the brown. BCAS, or Brown Car Appreciation Society lives to feature brown cars in a favorable light, and the classy bunch that we are like to brown the day with quality photos of brown automobiles, as the Patrón Saint of BCAS, Ricardo Montalban watches over us. You know, him in the Cordoba commercial with the soft Corinthian Leather. Malaise Era shakes hands with the recent uprising of earthy hues in manufacturer palettes, while we all discuss the brown sheet metal. It’s all very nice.

There are other Facebook groups like it, Ornch Car Cult and Nous Aimons les Voitures Vert to name a couple, for orange and green cars respectively. Together with a friend, Edvin, we set up Red Interior Appreciation Association, for the enjoyment of everyone who can appreciate the exquisite vibrance of an all-red, all-leather Cadillac Allante interior. But it’s BCAS that somehow forms the core of the color groups – there’s nothing quite like a deep brown car.

But of course, there’s trouble brewing.

Recently, there’s been a rise in the member number of BCAS. The group hit 1000 members just now, and before that there was a short celebratory run of model-number tie-in posts, mostly photos of Porsches for obvious reasons. But there’s always trouble to be had, when something gets too popular for its own good, isn’t there? Yesterday, a surge in the photo posts displayed an alarming trend. You see, in the core of BCAS there’s always been a battle over what exactly counts as a brown car. Tan and beige are often derided, since they’re seen as the easy way out. Maroon, redwood and burgundy are not brown, but tinges of deep red. Light often plays tricks on the photographer, showing burgundy cars browner than they are and the other way around. Manufacturer palettes usually sort this out, if nothing else.

But yesterday the slew of quick, mediocre posts gradually degraded to the point we found ourselves watching a sepia-tinted photo of a car of unfathomable hue. That isn’t what the group was meant for – what would Montalban do? I usually attempt to mentally run the photos by Montalban, to think whether he’d appreciate the color of the car being posted, whether he would find everything he needed in that small automobile.

Soon, it all went to rioting. A yellow rubber duck was posted, to signify the downfall of the group. Things got shut down by kicking out the offending party, but the damage was done, and suddenly brown was at stake. A counter-group was started by Blake Z. Rong, the noted connoisseur of brown leather jackets, to deflect the attention – a shadow-BCAS called the Burgundy Car Appreciation Society. BCAS madness ran amok, however, with the creation of Blurple Car Appreciation Society. Suddenly the existence and viability of every color group was questionable. Blake declares having created the Burgundy car group “for the sole purpose of obfuscation and chaos.” Battle tactics, but that group seems to be catching on.

At this point, I need to make a confession. I’m a mere pretender, when push comes to a shove. Despite being fond of them, I don’t drive or own a brown car, and that’s a dreadful and glaring omission on my part. It’s like wearing a t-shirt of a band to which you’ve never properly paid attention, just to try to attract favorable nods from people in the know. But I can try to make it better, for I’m only a sinner. The used car market is open to me, and all the brown Datsuns and Peugeots tempt me like nothing on earth. It’s time to show the color of my heart, and buy brown. We all can.