Here at Bailout Motors, we spend millions of dollars each year on market research to find out what the auto-buying public wants in a new car. And to my surprise, a vehicle that parks itself wasn’t one of the top 100 things customers look for. It wasn’t even in the top 1,209 things. Our surveys showed people wanted features like “quality,” “durability,” “better gas mileage” and “better transmissions.” One clown even wanted us to bring back those little vent windows all cars used to have. Automatic parallel parking wasn’t mentioned even once. But my wife, Gloria, was always complaining that there was never an empty parking space in front of Tiffany’s and Neiman Marcus when she wanted one. She doesn’t know how to parallel park anyway.

“I just never learned,” she explained to me one night. “Usually, I just have Godfrey let me out in front of the store and tell him to drive around the block until I come out. Like yesterday, I had to get that new $2,600 Prada bag, and I knew I had to get there quick or they’d be sold out. I would have driven myself but until they invent a car that can drive itself around the block until I come out, what could I do?”