they need to do something, because it is fucking out of control. every vehicle on the road except subcompacts are enormous. if you look at Civics or Corollas, compared to the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the models now are giant. look at the 1990s ford ranger compared to the one you can buy now. it's stupid. i drive a 20+ year old car and frankly, the new hybrid version doesn't really blow it out of the water when it comes to gas mileage. that's pathetic.
i would rather have better public transportation and much safer pedestrian/bicycling carveouts of course, but they make us have cars and the options for a little fuel sipper are getting narrower all the time.
but i'll be goddamned if there isn't always some new SUV model out on the road every month, distorting the gravity field as it goes by, with some name like the Nissan Dreadnought or the KIA Goliath or the Hyundai Leviathan. it's literally like 2008 never happened.
The SUVS increased the need for stronger, safer cars. So instead of optimizing fuel economy, they had to armor them up to ensure Karen in her killdozer distracted by whatever doesn't turn the average person into dog food.
Its so funny how car people(me included) complain about the old 15mph crash bumpers that were added to euro imports to make them compliant, and how everyone takes them off.
Flip up headlights on the other hand, were sadly very painful for pedestrians.
To make things even more fun, they are playing the same game even with the hybrid vehicles. Many of those are also getting huge (the Prius models just seem to keep inflating in size), but then they cheap out on the electric motors so that there is no towing capacity. Zero. You usually void your warranty if they find out you've been towing, and how could they not when you've added a tow bar? So now you have to buy a much larger vehicle just to cover the few times when you need the capacity, because you can't tow a single pound behind you, not even in a micro trailer.
Apparently a few vehicles are now being made with modest towing capacity, but they're all hybrid SUVs as far as I'm aware. Most of the car or wagon type hybrids (e.g. Prius, C-Max) still forbid towing. And I've noticed that they have also cheaped out on tow capacity even for the new hybrid pickups that the industry is so excited about. You have to buy an expensive battery upgrade for the Ford Lightning, for example.
By the way, those parody car names (Nissan Dreadnought, etc.) are right on the nose. Nissan makes an utterly immense SUV called the Armada. Gigantic V8 engine, body-on-frame construction, the works. I remember a TV ad that featured an ominous, booming voice: "you need a refuge from the urban jungle!".
Fucking Hummer EV that weighs 9 tonnes, has the potential energy of a small nuke, and can do 0 to 90 in less than the response time of the human nervous system.
Confession: 17-year-old me wanted a bright crimson red Armada because one of my favorite bands at the time was The Crimson Armada. I was very clever, believe me.
Even the EVs are stupid bazinga shit like CYBERTRUK(tm) which are meant for aggressive asshole presentation purposes and aren't nearly as efficient as they could be.
they need to do something, because it is fucking out of control. every vehicle on the road except subcompacts are enormous. if you look at Civics or Corollas, compared to the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the models now are giant. look at the 1990s ford ranger compared to the one you can buy now. it's stupid. i drive a 20+ year old car and frankly, the new hybrid version doesn't really blow it out of the water when it comes to gas mileage. that's pathetic.
i would rather have better public transportation and much safer pedestrian/bicycling carveouts of course, but they make us have cars and the options for a little fuel sipper are getting narrower all the time.
but i'll be goddamned if there isn't always some new SUV model out on the road every month, distorting the gravity field as it goes by, with some name like the Nissan Dreadnought or the KIA Goliath or the Hyundai Leviathan. it's literally like 2008 never happened.
The SUVS increased the need for stronger, safer cars. So instead of optimizing fuel economy, they had to armor them up to ensure Karen in her killdozer distracted by whatever doesn't turn the average person into dog food.
If the US had crash test requirements based on pedestrian collisions like Europe, a lot of those super tall trucks would shrink.
Its so funny how car people(me included) complain about the old 15mph crash bumpers that were added to euro imports to make them compliant, and how everyone takes them off.
Flip up headlights on the other hand, were sadly very painful for pedestrians.
To make things even more fun, they are playing the same game even with the hybrid vehicles. Many of those are also getting huge (the Prius models just seem to keep inflating in size), but then they cheap out on the electric motors so that there is no towing capacity. Zero. You usually void your warranty if they find out you've been towing, and how could they not when you've added a tow bar? So now you have to buy a much larger vehicle just to cover the few times when you need the capacity, because you can't tow a single pound behind you, not even in a micro trailer.
Apparently a few vehicles are now being made with modest towing capacity, but they're all hybrid SUVs as far as I'm aware. Most of the car or wagon type hybrids (e.g. Prius, C-Max) still forbid towing. And I've noticed that they have also cheaped out on tow capacity even for the new hybrid pickups that the industry is so excited about. You have to buy an expensive battery upgrade for the Ford Lightning, for example.
By the way, those parody car names (Nissan Dreadnought, etc.) are right on the nose. Nissan makes an utterly immense SUV called the Armada. Gigantic V8 engine, body-on-frame construction, the works. I remember a TV ad that featured an ominous, booming voice: "you need a refuge from the urban jungle!".
Fucking Hummer EV that weighs 9 tonnes, has the potential energy of a small nuke, and can do 0 to 90 in less than the response time of the human nervous system.
Confession: 17-year-old me wanted a bright crimson red Armada because one of my favorite bands at the time was The Crimson Armada. I was very clever, believe me.
Even the EVs are stupid bazinga shit like CYBERTRUK(tm) which are meant for aggressive asshole presentation purposes and aren't nearly as efficient as they could be.
I saw a first gen Ford Festiva the other day. It was beautiful.
I saw a classic Jeep Wrangler a while back and it had a smaller wheelbase than my sedan
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I think the joke is that the cars are so heavy they project their own gravity on the surrounding environment