philosophyonwheels.com

I had a friend approach me with a dilemma.  Her current car is possibly on its last legs and she has decided she is in the market for a new one.  Immediately I was overly enthused and began spewing specifications for the BMW 535i xDrive.  After a few deep breaths I then came up with some realistic parameters for her search.  My friend is a beautiful and smart twenty-something, fresh out of a prestigious school and into her career field as a budding professional.  With a firm monthly allowance for a car payment, we would be sticking to cars under $20,000.  It will be her first new car!  That’s possibly more exciting than a first car which is typically clunker.  This kind of choice will reflect on a person’s image for years and there are just so many things to consider.  Let’s get started.

If my friend was of the most beige complexion of practical, she would have first concluded that a Toyota Corolla is the car for her.  Compact, cheap, and efficient: this car makes the most financial sense to a young woman starting her independent life.  But this car’s problem is that it screams compact, cheap, and efficient.  Sure there are Kia hatchbacks out there that cost less, but because there are so many Corolla’s on the road it makes them seem like a fleet of four-wheeled conformity enforcing sentinels.  A first job can be exciting, but who wants to commute to work for the 50th time and hop out of a Corolla…ready to finally fit into that round hole.  This might be the day!  (Conformity sentinel: “Why aren’t you wearing Gap and listening to NPR during your commute!?”)

Volkswagen Jetta.  This car is truly instant entry-level-chic.  Can anyone remember when the Jetta wasn’t in style?  That doesn’t happen by accident.  When you enter into the “das auto” culture with the purchase of a VW, the Germans offer their appreciation by the precision tuned upkeep of the brand.  All of those meticulously crafted TV commercials featuring hip young people continue to reinforce the cool factor for VW.  That’s why it is so easy to imagine you and three friends in a silver Jetta, windows rolled down, and driving on an open road to the beach or any other random destination.  The Jetta is fun and it’s very good at staying that way.

My friend may want to consider a Subaru Outback, but she will then quickly remember to which type these are nearly exclusively reserved.  Next car…

Mini Cooper: too small.  This is a Tic Tac with a white roof.  The Cooper would be right only if you were absolutely certain you would not move during the time you owned this car.  Using just some basic math I calculated that to move an average 1-bedroom apartment’s amount of stuff would require 12 million round trips in a Mini.  And with only two doors, at some point your friends will become annoyed trying to squeeze into the rear seats.  Don’t let a Mini Cooper ruin your friendships.

Honda Civic.  This car might be right for a young professional who is really into Techno and/or raves and has an overly exuberant sense of sarcasm.  I envision a future where children seizing from too much Pokemon will be whisked away in a Honda Civic badged as the Epilepsy Ambulance.  If my opinion for the Civic hasn’t been made clear yet, I will just say that it continues to dance on the line of acceptable techno-fad styling.  And Honda changes their cars’ styling so much, you can expect the Civic to be redesigned five minutes after you are done reading this paragraph and your Civic will have been rendered old and boring.  

Now for a surprise: the Ford Fusion.  I like the way this car was redesigned for this year.  It actually says to me that Ford management’s idea coalesced into a sensible product.  It looks sharp with a hint of aggression.  The engine is not puny but has a sensible balance of efficiency and power.  The interior craftsmanship is still slightly behind similarly priced foreign sedans, but it exudes a certain humility.  It’s as if Ford was saying “we know we’re not great at the interior quality, so we’re going to do simple and not get caught with something painfully contrived.”  Unfortunately the biggest thing going against this car is the negative stigma lingering over the Ford logo.  (That I think is symptomatic of a much bigger problem concerning America and patriotism: far too big a subject for the scope of this post.)  

So there’s some of my analysis.  Did she pick a car yet?…nope.  Stay tuned for an update.  I promise.

Toyota Prius

Years ago the Toyota Prius was the car to have if you were a celebrity concerned with having the public know you were environmentally aware.  But now the Prius is almost an ordinary car in suburban America.  And even SUVs are built with hybrid energy drives.  (I still think this is a contradiction in engineering.)

Car manufacturers have collectively been building up the awareness and cachet of hybrid technology.  They did this mostly by highlighting the “green” and virtuous ability of going further with less gas.  And along the way a lot of people gained a general understanding of how these hybrid energy systems work.  Sounds like a winning combination: having a warm-fuzzy that you’re not hurting the Earth as much as before, and a satisfaction of understanding how your car works…generally.

Here’s my theory: all things being equal I think transportation is environmentally a zero-sum game.  It’s true your Prius will pump less harmful particles into your town’s air than your old car with it’s conventional engine.  But there’s a small city in a remote part of Russia that most likely smelted the nickel that resides in the Prius’s battery.  This town is notorious among environmentalists for being one of the worst in the world and can be blamed directly for a shockingly sizable percentage of global emission of certain hazardous materials.  (Trees barely grow in this town.)  Of course it’s impossible to decide how much is to be blamed on the Prius, and Toyota can endlessly spin the numbers and discredit unfavorable reports.  But put simply, buying the Prius has taken the pollution out of your town and placed it somewhere else.  Then there’s the geographically various assembly points and the energy required to ferry the parts.  Parts of a Prius are most likely better travelled than their owners.  

So how is pollution reduced for real?  Consolidation.  The amount of energy needed to move 20 people and one bus is significantly less than moving 20 people and 20 cars the same distance.  The Prius weighs nearly the same as conventional cars.  Sure the individual owner may recognize fuel savings due to the hybrid energy drive but the Earth might not be able to tell the difference in the larger picture.

By nature us Americans are terribly decadent.  We will never willingly relinquish our own personal space during our daily commute to share it with 20 strangers on a bus and incur the added inconvenience of public transportation.

Now I appeal to today’s celebrity genuinely concerned with your environmental public image.  Go and buy a Honda Fit and be seen driving it.  It’s conventionally powered, it’s smaller and weighs much less than an average car.  Simple as that.  Less car is more savings…globally.