DETROIT, MI — General Motors has just announced that Chevy’s smallest gas-powered model, the subcompact Trax, will have a new package available halfway through the 2024 model year. This package, known as the “Beef Package,” will upgrade the Trax’s horn with one of three new sounds.
The first is what GM calls its “Locomotion” sound: that of a freight train’s horn, reproduced by speakers mounted on the engine block, echoing a recording of a Leslie RS3K dual-horn that was stripped off of a CSS EMD GP38-2 that overturned in northwest Indiana (only two fatalities).
The second one GM calls its “Lighthouse” motif, wherein the reproduced sound is that of a fog horn—specifically, a “Daboll trumpet,” an antique coal-fired engine that pumps compressed hot air through a reed horn. This particular horn was once used by the Boston Light on Little Brewster Island off the coast of Massachusetts, where it was recorded.
The third is GM’s “Beef Queen,” the preeminent of the bunch and the only one made in partnership with another company—that company being HornBlasters, whose slogan is “Don’t blow your temper, blow your horns!” This sound is a reproduction of a “Battleship KM-135” air horn, which, at the decibel level generated, is enough to make rattled road-ragers empty their bowels involuntarily.
Curious minds have asked why the “Beef Queen” is so called instead of just parroting the name of its origin, the “Battleship KM-135” air horn. After repeated inquiries, Billium Bathwater, Chevy’s VP of Honks (under GM’s Sound Division), finally responded, saying, “My team is always on me about sharing the creative aspects of the job.”
“It was a Wednesday morning,” he said. “I had just housed a large cookie dough Blizzy from DQ and was rather lethargic—on the verge of falling asleep and rather susceptible to persuasion. They entreated me for about fifteen minutes, and I eventually relented. I told them, ‘You can name one of the sound packages, but you have to come up with the name together and unanimously agree.'”
“They went right to it and came up with a whole slate of names for the different sounds. I was pretty upset since I wanted only one, so I told them they had to at least narrow it down to two. Well, they did, but—to my disgust—they presented it to me at a bad time when my own bosses were visiting.”
“My chiefs saw the two names on the whiteboard and said they approved, so just like that I suddenly had two product names I didn’t agree to: the ‘Locomotion’ and the ‘Lighthouse.’ That left me only with the ‘Battleship KM-135’ to work with, and even though this one already came with a name, I was damned if I wasn’t going to have any creative input on my pet project.”
“So I renamed the ocean freighter horn in honor of my mother, whom my siblings and I had called the ‘Beef Queen’ due to her tremendous farts. I’m sure that, looking down at us from that meteor she’s riding around the sun, she’s proud of me… She’s proud of me…”
With the purchase of a 2024 Chevy Trax, the sonorous Beef Package can be added for only $540 more.
