Wednesday, January 20, 2010

From Slate: Help! I bought a small car but it sucks!

Here's Matthew DeBord, posting to his blog, Shifting Gears, in Slate's The Big Money section. What DeBord has to say will surprise few of us, but it seldom gets said this clearly. Here's what he says, and what he doesn't say.

Most Americans don't want Priuses, nay: We want big, safe comfortable cars and big trucks. Mustangs are compacts. Minis and SmartCars are sh*tbox targets, third cars for limousine liberals.

Hey, we work hard (if we have jobs). We pay our taxes. We often recycle. We can afford fuel for our vehicles. If we want motorscooters or bicycles we know where to buy them. What we want is real cars and trucks, and real homes with real yards in neighborhoods full of nice folks like us.

We want a president who was born here and believes in our form of government. We don't like the way things are going. All this talk about hybrids is coastal bullcrap. We don't care what Brad Pitt drives. We want big cars.

We've always driven big cars and our daddies drove big cars. It's a big country. We got big houses and big shopping lists at Costco and Lowes. SmartCars won't cut it.

Are the senators and representatives in DC driving Priuses? Hell no. We can pay for health care and we can pay for premium fuel. It's our money. This sh*t has gone far enough.

3 comments:

Larry and Heather said...

Ciao from Italy where (thankfully) small cars rule. With diesel fuel at around $8 a gallon there's no drive thru lanes and most drive small cars though you do see an obnoxious "Humbler" now and then. We're carless now, living in the historic center of Viterbo where parking a car is a huge hassle. We can get everywhere we need to go on foot or by bicycle and rent a car when it's time to go up and see Milano-San Remo.

Anonymous said...

Fine, but aside from riding your bike what are you going to do about it?
Jim

geoffrey said...

These are the same whiners who have anxiety attacks over the cost of fuel. Cheap energy is rightfully an increasingly rare commodity.
As the mighty dinosaurs became extinct, so will those who must depend on their carcasses for fuel.