Gov't Cars
Go watch Theo's video below, sourced from our man in Detroit Des Moines, Iowahawk, and then come back here.
(I'm not trying to upstage your post, Theo. The cut and paste thing did not work in the comment box and isn't working too well here, either. Maybe I should resign myself to being less wordy.)
This video shows a number of vehicles, most of which are clearly designed as toys. But four of the cars shown are actual, real, for-sale vehicles at least in the recent past. Three of the four had a lot of government input in the designs.
1. The little red car being crushed by the crash test sled is, I think, a "Chery" from China. The Chinese think we'll buy them. They have tried (and failed) to sell them in a number of European countries (hence the crash testing video). The name "Chery" is supposed to look like "Chevy" to the Chinese... That's probably no more than a 30 mph-ish side impact, from something much smaller than an F-150, by the way. The Chery driver would be dead, no question. The F-150 driver would be asking, "Did I just run over something?"
2. Hopefully everyone recognized the Yugo rolling over. This was built in Yugoslavia (?)and was already an obsolete (but still OK) Fiat design (the '60's Fiat 128) before the communist manufacturer/redesigner got ahold of it in the '70's. Enough said. Hopefully, also, Fiat made a few bucks/lira selling the design and tooling.
3. More interesting is the wedge shaped Real Pelosi. This is a "Commutacar" actually constructed in the US in the '70's, and probably not designed with direct government input. It is a glorified electric golf cart seating 2 with no crash protection other than 5 mph bumpers. They did not make many. Chrysler is building equivalent "neighborhood" cars today and has been for a while.
4. But Iowahawk's Real Genius is in showing us a Trabant in action. It is the ugly white sedan featured in the middle of the ad. Trabants were built in government plants in East Germany. They were and are the worst cars built intentionally (meaning they came out exactly as they were designed). Imagine the noisiest, smokiest two-stroke weed whacker or leaf blower you have ever come across. Now stick that engine in the back end of a 1000 pound, 4 seat car (passengers could weigh more than the car) and hook it up to a motorcycle transmission. Zero to 30 in a minute or so. Zero to 60? Impossible unless you pushed it off a cliff. And this was a Status Symbol in the East German culture!
As bad as that is, the experience of buying a Trabant was worse (though we may see similar programs at our local dealers with the introduction of the Pelosi). You put up your money, the full purchase price, at a government office, to buy a place in line. The cost of the car was several years' wages for most folks. It usually took over 2 years for your place in line to match up with the delivery of a car. And you were on your own once you took delivery: no warranty, no real dealer service as we might recognize it. And the East German government bragged about providing mobility to their subjects (kind of like free health care in Cuba). Mass transit was horrible, yet popular. I wonder why.
Trabbies are now kept as a curiosity by car collectors of the West. The no-longer- East Germans got rid of theirs as fast as they could, buying old, very used Volvos and VWs. Even worn out, they were infinitely better cars than a new Trabant.
I am seriously considering loading up on vehicles (like I need an excuse) 'cause I might not be able to buy anything I'd want to drive after the factories have tooled up to build Pelosis. The average American car WILL BE DIFFERENT in a couple of years as the Senators and Congressmen get their way with the bailout money. Iowahawk speaketh truth, even with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
As an aside, here is some info on the Chrysler/GEM "Peapod", in case you thought I was kidding. They have apparently foisted off nearly 40,000 of these things to folks in California and Cape Cod in the past decade. I wonder if anyone at the local Chrysler/Dodge dealership would have any idea what you were talking about if you walked in and asked for a Peapod test drive...
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15 Comments
Re: the PeaPod.......where do the golf bags go?
OK, Nat, I now officially declare we have a problem with our comments app thingy. I lost an hour's worth of typing (OK, OK, I am a slow typist) this afternoon, Otto gets a free (to him) triple dip and Portia, who also should certainly know how to do this, gets a gratis double dip.
RE: Portia I think you just attach your pull carts to the back. Or just throw the bags up on the roof and tie 'em down with a rope. Oh! Reality just hit: no one you know will be caught dead riding with you in the thing, so the golf bag (singular) goes in the passenger seat. Easy solution.
The average American car SHOULD be different in a couple of years! It's not only silly, but irresponsible to drive the kinds of vehicles most do now. There's no justification for using a 12 m.p.g., 3-ton, quad-cab behemoth as a single-occupant commuter vehicle.
Lots of smaller cars have excellent crash ratings, offer very good protection, and often triple the fuel efficiency of lumbering trucks & SUVs.
So there !
Hmmph !~
Rob,
a. Not everyone can afford or have room for a fleet. They may NEED their pickup or suv. I know I do. If you can do a multicar thing, good for you.
b. The cost of driving is not just MPG and the price of gas. It is frequently less expensive to drive a larger car once depreciation, maintenance and insurance are factored in.
c. You are not aware that the safety ratings are based on crash testing with vehicles of the same mass (weight). As the masses vary, the results become less correct. The government wants you to think that smaller vehicles are safe so you'll buy them. The crash tests are designed to show you that. Current small cars are way safer than they used to be, granted, but the government has yet to figure out how to repeal or violate the laws of physics. But they are working on it. This is the reason that the insurance on, say, a Honda Civic, runs more than the insurance on, say, a Toyota SUV.
d. I like driving small, efficient, good handling cars. But I will not trade off my families safety for a few MPG.
e. I believe that it is the height of responsibility for me to protect my family and I drive them in a large safe vehicle. I drive safely and I conserve where I can, but I worry much more about conserving money than I do just gasoline. I will have an idiot yakking on his cell phone plow into one of my kids or me while driving one of these days. I could not live with myself if my kid was injured or killed and I could have prevented it by having her or him drive a safer, larger vehicle.
f. Detroit is building the cars that you want everyone to drive. So are the non American car companies. People do not lean toward buying them unless whipped into a crisis frenzy by the media.
g. Most Importantly, Rob, who are you to dictate what I drive? You would have been happy in a gov't job in East Germany making sure all the little people were able to eventually get their smelly little poorly built 2 stroke cars while you still have your chauffeur driven Russian limo. Those with socialist/totalitarian tendancies always see themselves in positions of authority, enabled to share their wisdom with the masses. Sadly, only a few percent of the populations of E. Germany, the USSR or Cuba dictate terms, which probably would not have included you. Rob, you would likely have been one of the proles standing in line at a government store, happy to receive what the government, run by someone considered smarter than you, would allow you to have.
h. Be freakin' thankful you live (currently) in a country that you can choose to be parsimonious with our oil and gas reserves and drive a Prius, even though it'll cost you a fortune and will ultimately be more damaging to the environment when it is scrapped, or drive a Jeep that will last forever even if it burns a little more fuel thereby ultimately being better for the environment.
i. The point of Theo's original post and Iowahawk's, which you clearly missed, is that you WON'T HAVE A CHOICE!!!!, if our incoming socialist/totalitarian overlords have their way.
j. Have a nice day.
Shepherd, by all means run with anything that I post. I merely got the link and added a sentence of crap.
I am not defending Rob O's dictatorial tendencies but I do have to confess that if you drive a lesser vehicle (I've driven everything from two-seaters to my current full-sized sedan) it is blatantly obvious that say an F-250 just doesn't see you and to an Excursion you are an inconvenience. If I had a family I'd be driving the panzer, I admit.
But under no circumstances would I tell people what to drive. It's your decision. And under no circumstances would I think that the government knows how to design anything. Let's all go to the downtown post office and look at its efficiency and then say the government should control anything.
By the way, the body on the Trabi is compressed cotton batting in resin. And the West Germans call it the Trabifurz, or Trabi Fart. Whereas they call, if I remember, a huge big slick car, an Amischlitten, or American sled.
So there !@
Hrummmmph !
Here's my justification for driving a 11 mpg truck whenever and with or without whomever I want:
It's paid for.
[blockquote]a Jeep that will last forever [/blockquote]
Might want to be more specific there. Jeep (Chrysler) has made a lot of really poor models over the last 15 years.
In an study entitled "Dust to Dust" that I linked to and posted a while back, the Jeep Wrangler was the most environmentally friendly vehicle, while the Prius was at the other end of the scale. What was considered in the study was the full-lifetime environmental impact, starting with initial design work through scrappage. Total energy usage and the pollution created in scrapping were included. Simpler vehicles and those with long lifetimes scored well. A Corolla scored way better than a Prius. An American pickup scores better than a Lexus. How long will the drivetrain last? How long will that engine be in production? How many models will the drivetrain work in (spreading the design overhead and impact over a number of products)? I own 3 Jeeps of various models. I know what you are talking about reliablity wise, but the real trucky ones, Liberty, Wrangler, G. Cherokee, are fundamentally designed to last a long time. A Chevy Silverado might have been a better example, but it did not score quite as well as the Jeep Wrangler in "Dust to Dust."
Hey, stulbe must be your middle name. Great post!
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Re: the Peapod.....where do the golf bags go?