Kaiser Motors made a deal with the Argentinian government way back in 1955. The deal was to build cars under license in Argentina, as a way to combine the style of European cars of the era alongside the rugged dependability of American cars. This is a plan that arguably worked well, and was given the name IKA (short for Industrias Kaiser Argentina). However, just a few short years later, the company decided they wanted their own designs to be sold to their people. The result of this? The IKA-Renault Torino, the most evil car ever known to man. How was it evil? Well, get ready to take off your sheeple blinders, because I’m going to tell you all the ways.
For starters, the Torino used a logo of a prancing bull, at least in part to mock Ferrari’s puny horse emblem. Undoubtedly you all are aware of the Minotaur, that part man/part bull of ancient Greece that The Man wants you to believe is only a creature of myth. The Minotaur was originally said to have been slain by Theseus. But oh, ho ho, dear reader, surely we can not buy in to the fact that there are a number of facts that we cannot overlook. Not only was the Minotaur real, he was also forced to escape Europe for a new life in South America, much like a classical era Joseph Goebbels. By matching letters with their corresponding numerical output, spelling out Minotaur gives us 64668287. Look again at that, it’s plain to see. There’s a ‘666' right there in the first half. But digging even deeper, giving Theseus the same treatment, we get 8437387. No sixes, but that is clearly a phone number. A phone number for the Thunderbird Internal Medicine Group in Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix, another supposedly mythical creature capable of great death and destruction. Coincidence? Surely not!
Moving along, the IKA Torino has a measured length of 186 inches, equal to 5.166666666666666666666666666... inches. That’s an infinite number of 666's. As for weight, the lightest model came in at 1,060 kg, equal to 70,666.6666666666666666666666... Thai baht (the measure of weight, not the form of money, obviously). The car was available with one of three different engines, all of which were of the Inline-6 variety. I6, I6, I6; I think you see where this is going.
The Torino was released to the Argentinian public on November 30, 1966. I’m sure it’s just as clear to you as it is to me that this was intentionally done as a celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Andrea Doria, admiral of the Italian navy, and all around mean-looking guy. The ocean liner SS Andrea Doria, as you probably recall, is most notable for it’s collision with the MS Stockholm in 1956, resulting in 46 fatalities. Evil, pure evil.
Of course, maybe you aren’t familiar with the IKA-Renault Torino. That’s understandable, if you live under a rock or keep your head buried under the sand. But there are a few other people in history that are documented as having owned an example: Fidel Castro, Leonid Brezhnev, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. Enough evil to go around, I’d say...
