Help
Sign In
eco-chic
September 2009 
The Amazing Shrinking Automobile
Posted on May 26th, 2009
by 
Eric
Eric
The green movement is hip right now and all for it. It's a little humorous to me how all of the big corporations have avoided environmental stewardship as long as they possibly could to join in. They waited until the precise moment that they collectively realized, "Hey, there's piles of cash to be made off of these tree huggers!". Like I said before though, the more the merrier. We're all better off for it.
It seems everything is getting smaller these days, especially cars. The Smart car, for example, is so incredibly tiny that one would have to shoehorn two bags of groceries into the back. With a pricetag of nearly $20k, honestly, I'm not sure how smart they are. After all they rig them to pass U.S. regulations they only get 40-45 miles per gallon, while managing to squeeze out almost twice the MPGs in Europe. I owned a great '86 Honda CRX with a carborated engine that got almost the exact same mileage and could probably have fit a Smart car into its modest hatchback.
If you remember, just a few years ago big was "in". Some of the gas guzzling behemoths were just as ridiculous as the tiny cars of today. Some of these things could've had their own zip code and some certainly had their own mortgage. For the moment, the pendulum has simply swung in the other direction. Now it's, "eco-chic" to be driving the absolute smallest vehicle money can buy.
Humanity just loves to take things to that "next level" it's in our DNA. I just know that before long you you will see people unfolding minuscule little vehicles from their back pockets and riding them like clown bicycles down the road while wearing solar panel covered helmets. Like I said before though, it's all good.
For my next vehicle purchase, which I hope will be a very long time from now, maybe the pedulum will have rested somewhere in the middle. I'm not picky, something with a backseat and room for our dog will do. Oh and did I mention that it'll have to have an exotic engine that gets 100mpg and runs on mere tap water?
Access: Public
