Meals on Wheels : It may not be safe, but in Southern California mobile gastronomy is a way of life. Drivers have become adept at turning their cars into rolling fast-food feeders.

The California Highway Patrol, ever protective of our undivided attentions, says motoring and machaca don’t mix.

But, spokesmen confess, show them an officer who hasn’t patrolled Interstate 5 with a Dolly Madison alongside his or her Maglite and they’ll show you a hunger striker with a badge.

Car designers, ever bothered by flying objects inside our flying objects, say their priority goes to designing safe interiors with air bags keeping a driver from going face first through a windshield, not into a pepperoni pizza.

But, acknowledges Jerry Hirschberg, vice president of Nissan Design International of San Diego, any commuter who ever popped an antacid likely has nibbled and sipped while driving.

“Me? You bet,” he admits. “Once, in a (Nissan) Quest, I folded down a seat into a table and actually used it for the purpose for which we had designed it.

“Had a McChicken sandwich, fries and a Coke. God, it tasted great.”

Response to a View request exploring readers’ automotive eating habits, however, indicates Hirschberg’s mobile gastronomy is positively uncreative.

Monica Panno, a computer accounts manager, deserves a SigAlert Supping Award for driving the Hollywood Freeway while eating a Chinese meal. With rice. With chopsticks. While shifting a five-speed.

“I have actually bought cars based on their ability to balance a container full of liquid without spilling,” Panno says. Her current car is a 1992 Saturn Coupe--blue with a plum sauce interior.

Bob Makela of Long Beach is a fast-lane fast feeder with the Taco Bell habit. He finds no problem with Mexican food when driving his doorless, roofless Jeep. “If eating a big, messy taco from my personal Spago, I can lean out the Jeep at 60 m.p.h. and let the excess spillage fall innocently onto the road,” he explains.

The downside? Jeeps come with gale-force interiors. Salsa spots and greasy lettuce are inevitably blown onto clean shirts. Odd blobs of dead tomato may splatter the windshields of following Bimmers.

“Every meal,” Makela says, “is an adventure.”

No readers reported being ticketed for lane wandering or rubbing fenders with other diners while noshing on the run.

But CHP Officer Todd Sturges says he once stopped a suspected drunk driver to find that the man’s meandering was caused by preoccupation with an oversized cheeseburger. Sturges also has investigated rear-end collisions where clues to the probable cause were fries and bent buns in the rear ender’s lap.

Says Sturges: “If a citation is written, it is for unsafe speed for existing conditions.”

“Existing conditions,” according to other officers, include talking on cellular phones, using laptop computers, reading paperbacks, applying mascara, retying ponytails, passing sushi, getting a sun-reflector tan, polishing nails or--usually on the graveyard shift--groping a passenger. Or vice versa.

Munching while motoring, reports Peter O’Rourke, director of the California Office of Traffic Safety, has spawned a cottage industry of gadgets: Refrigerators plugged into cigarette lighters, dashboard hot plates, mini-microwave ovens that fit under the front seat--”even a ‘Road Hog’ apron designed to keep nasty spills from spoiling one’s suit.

“Unfortunately . . . more than 92% of all collisions on the freeway are caused by driver inattention,” he says.

And the problem can cost more than stained lapels.

“I recall one unfortunate incident when a man, eating a hamburger, was rear-ended and choked to death,” O’Rourke adds. “So, my vote for the ideal dining car is one that is parked.”

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Eating at the wheel may be a fender bender or worse waiting to happen. But in Southern California, where a week’s commuting can total one work day at the wheel, combining activities is accepted as the quickest route to going places.

As one traveler noted: “The solution is obvious: Eat at home. I can’t. I’m in a McHurry.”

Other readers’ letters wove common threads:

They Don’t Make Dining

Cars Like They Used To

“My 1979 Chevrolet was perfect,” says Naomi Roth of Culver City. “I could set a tacky plastic beverage container on the transmission hump. You know, the kind weighted down on both sides with sand bags.”

John Hughes of Morro Bay says he clings to his 1967 Chevelle as the quintessence of meals on wheels: “There’s more room to toss the empties, and space in the trunk for a small oven to cook those 16-inch pizzas for the long haul to Big Sur.”

Joanne Serin of Sherman Oaks remembers the ‘60s for more than Woodstock and the Hanoi Hilton. It was the decade her father owned a British-built Humber station wagon--known over there as a shooting brake. Shooting , as in hunting. Brake , as in small thicket or hide.

“It had airline-type trays that pulled down from the back of the front seats,” she remembers. “A very eater-friendly car.”

Jeff Heister, a Northridge sales rep, still lives the California dream through coastal drives in his 1958 Corvette with the top down, and In-and-Out burgers and fries to go.

It isn’t the roomiest of eating places. It doesn’t even come with cup holders. “But when you spill something,” Heister notes, “its wipes right off the good ol’ vinyl.”

For Richard Moore of Huntington Beach, a mug of coffee in his 1979 Oldsmobile Delta Eighty-Eight is easier than drinking in a corner booth at Denny’s.

The handle of any mug, you see, fits snug between the split back of the bench seat in his coupe. At lunchtime, the mug becomes a ceramic container for a regular bag of McDonald’s fries.

“And my automatic transmission leaves one hand free to devour a quarter-pounder,” he says.

Modern Cars Are Short

On Table Manners

So says Scott Rose of Los Angeles. There are no cup holders in his 3-year-old sedan. A dashboard depression isn’t deep enough to contain a burrito in even shallow turns. Lumps in the passenger seat prevent perching a drink there.

Nissan designer Hirschberg should take note; Rose drives a 1990 Nissan Sentra XE.

Writes Culver City’s Hal Horne: “I have a 1990 Ford Tempo. When Ford said ‘Quality Is Job 1’ they weren’t thinking of driving and dining.”

He finds zero food storage space around the gearshift. No room beneath the armrest. No cup holders. And the sloping dashboard makes coffee a constant threat to the laps of driver and front passenger.

“I’ve had to become very proficient at one-handed maneuvers, such as using my little finger to flip on the turn signal, then whipping my left hand around the wheel to corner,” he explains. “All without spilling a drop of coffee.”

Cindy’s Lieberman’s 1992 Toyota Camry contains no antidote for a Big Mac Attack. No place except the seat for burger bags. Only flimsy cup holders with nooks and crannies impossible to scrub clean of spilled goop.

“It’s time manufacturers quit wasting space on impractical cigarette lighters and ashtrays, and design a car that helps make it more convenient to chow down on long commutes,” she suggests.

Alexandra Christensen-Finlay of Palm Springs has no cup holders, no console cubby holes, and therefore no patience for eating or drinking in her Volvo 740 GL.

“Ah, but for $100 one can purchase a device to place between the front seats,” she says. “Or you can buy a tacky plastic drink holder to place in the window. The first not being a priority item, the latter not attractive.”

Deborah Zalesky drives a 1988 Toyota Celica with a cup holder that is a serious slurper’s worst nightmare: “The circumference of a Winchell’s mug is larger than the circumference of the cup holder. You men just place the cup between your legs. Try doing that with a skirt. Not!”

Toyota 4-Runners, Acura Integras, Ford Tauruses . . . all were dissed by readers for undersized cup holders and skid prone surfaces. Or, in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Cash of Chino Hills, only one cup holder in the arm rest of the family Buick.

“We have to carry his and her straws,” she says.

Buy American, Asian

or Travel Thirsty

Readers who drive Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs and other expensive marques united in a single criticism: Even $40,000 doesn’t buy cup holders in a European car.

Designers such as Hirschberg recognize it as a cultural quirk. In Europe, driving is high-speed, competitive and more the personal experience. Eating and drinking, however, are for quieter, social moments shared with friends and lovers.

Renee Shaftar of Irvine drives a Mercedes-Benz with absolutely no niches for nibbles. “I did drive a Chevy Celebrity wagon once and it had this really convenient drink holder that slid out from the dash,” she says.

“It was sealed with some foam to grip the drink and all cars should have at least that.”

The Bigger They Are,

the Better the Eating

Today’s vans, wagons and sport utility vehicles--the Aerostars, the Buick Estate, the Navajos, the Humvees in mufti--offer more dining amenities than most bachelor apartments.

Mark Bloomfield’s 1992 GMC Suburban comes close to a rolling coffee bar. “How about eight cup holders, standard equipment, for starters?” he asks.

Ernesto Acosta of Moorpark, father of four, is another Suburban devotee. It has trays and benches, console lids that flip up into table tops and upholstery with an anti-ketchup coating.

“So it doesn’t matter how often the kids spill or throw food at each other,” he says.

Jackie Siler of Whittier says a 1987 Toyota Van is a perfect aid to good digestion: “The motor is inside, behind and under the drivers seat. The area between the seats maintains a nice warm temperature, a convenient warming spot for tacos, fries and pizza slices.”

Dining while driving, of course, is not without its pains.

Spaghetti dripping from chins. Laps sloshing in chocolate malts. Ketchup on your k.d. lang tapes. And, for Nikki Goodman, owner of a 1983 Mitsubishi Tredia, “neon-orange carrot juice down an all-white shirt dress.

“No excuse. I simply missed my mouth. Then sat on the 405 watching the orange patches grow.”

For others, dropped food can become a blessing.

“I use my car (1985 Honda Civic) as a food dehydrator,” reports Teresa Thompson of Hesperia. “I make my own sun-dried tomatoes out of ketchup packets lost in winter that turn up in July.”

Double duty as a trash compactor will never be the lot of the 1993 Land Rover Defender 110. It is a utility vehicle, a back-to-the-outback version of the luxury Range Rover that comes with bare floors covered by rubber matting.

Says Land Rover vice-president Roger Ball: “Drop food and you simply hose out the car.”