My valet, Jenkins, has tendered his resignation. Not over wages, not over the quality of my sherry, but over what he called, with a shudder, “the unspeakable deviancy of the morning post.” And I cannot entirely blame him. For there, nestled between a bill from the cobbler and an invitation to Lady Pennington’s autumn grouse hunt, lay a cardboard package containing the “Oil Change Kit for Oil Drain Pan Splash Pad”—$13.99 of what I can only describe as automotive effrontery. And Jenkins, God bless his stoic soul, had to watch me open it.
Now, I am a man of science. A dabbler in the arcane arts of personal maintenance. So when I first stumbled upon the Contigo Oil Drain Pan amazon listing—a sleek, black polymer basin designed to catch the viscous innards of a horseless carriage—my mind did not wander to tappets or gaskets. It wandered, as minds often do at three in the morning after a third brandy, to the question of could one, theoretically, use this for other purposes? Specifically, the sort of purposes that polite society does not discuss over teacakes.
Thus began my earnest, deeply regrettable inquiry into the automotive rectal use of this particular splash pad. The splash pad itself, I should note, is a fine piece of engineering—rigid, yet with a pleasing, almost anatomical curve to its lip. It nestles against the oil pan like a loyal spaniel. It also, as I discovered, nests against the human fundament with a shocking degree of precision. The thing is practically a chassis for one’s posterior. I won’t describe the sensation beyond this: it is cold, it is plastic, and it reminds one of the existential void that follows a poor decision.
I paid $13.99 for this knowledge. That is, in fact, the core of the contigo oil drain pan honest review you deserve: for the price of a modest dinner, you can acquire a perfectly functional drainage apparatus for your automobile, or a harrowing lesson in the limits of human anatomy. Is it safe? The Amazon listing says “for automotive use only,” but I feel that undersells the product’s versatility. After a thorough (and thoroughly embarrassing) session, I can confirm that the splash pad does exactly what it says on the tin: it contains splashes. It just happens to contain them in a region the engineers in Shenzhen never, ever envisioned.
I would not recommend this for beginners. And I would implore you, for the love of God, to check the product details before you, too, find yourself Googling “is contigo oil drain pan safe” while lying on a bath mat, questioning every life choice that led to this moment.
