My wife will tell you that whenever I am restless I go and look at cars. I love cars. If I had millions of dollars I would have a dozen cars, all with different uses and feelings about them. For years I have loved the Corvette, especially since the C5 version. The C6 is actually my favorite, the C7 being a bit overdone.
I have a Z4 with a soft top. It is small, agile and has everything I want in a fun vehicle- convertible, leather (red in this case), manual transmission, wood dash. For all that I love my Z4, I have lusted after a Corvette for nearly 20 years, and every time I drive or sit in one, I come away grateful for my choices.
The newer generation Corvettes are big cars, but they are not big on the inside. The interior is actually less spacious than my Z4- less leg room, less head room. It feels not like an aircraft cockpit (that favorite word for drivers looking for a certain type of car) but like the interior of a space capsule. Its door sills are impossibly wide. It is a great big car with no interior space, not very nice leather and no wood. It is not for me. My ongoing fantasy, however, of wanting a Corvette, is relevant to this blog post.
More and more cars today look like space ships, or Buck Rogers props. Here is the Corvette-
Here is the new Ford GT-
Here is the current McLaren-
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Here is the batmobile-
I really don't see much difference. Scoops, oil coolers, big tires, seats for two. Crazy buyers....
These are not practical cars. While admitting practicality is not high on the list of attributes for a sports car, there is a point of no return from inanity. Not only are most of these vehicles incredibly expensive, they are impossible to service, hard to get in and out of, get lousy gas mileage (the Corvette is a notable exception to this) and are outrageous to insure.
They represent to me a society increasingly out of touch with its own reality. In the hierarchy of needs transition from walking to a buggy to a car there is an obvious rapid increase in functionality. These vehicles are just the opposite. All practical function is gone; they are a status (and sexual) show item. Just so with our society.
We want to stop racism. We create hiring advantages, and school advantages. Now in those same schools students scream for safe zones to protect them from dangerous ideas. Anything challenging certain orthodox beliefs about society is hate, or a micro-aggression, or racist/sexist, religiously biased. Just like the cars we build, we have moved from an increase in opportunity for all to a strident, functionless 'utopia' where victim status is the path to attention. It is the same with our foreign policy. We advocate peaceful solutions with people who are actively trying to destroy us. We have forgotten that good fences make good neighbors, and not everyone uses a swimming pool for the same thing.
Our fantasy, Batman world asserts that labor is worth 15 dollars per hour but that wealth gained through effort is wrong, that anyone can be successful except for rampant racism and sexism, that all people are equal, and that equality is measured by outcome, not spirit (no spirit please. Talking about God is a macro-aggression). Healthcare is a right but not one we want to pay for, freedom is a right we don't have to fight for, speech is a right, but only as long as I say what you believe.
A Corvette is bigger than a Z4 while being less comfortable, screams status of a type while having no amenities, and is said to be cheap when it costs 65,000.00 for the base model. It is all flash without substance, not really a competitor for far more sophisticated vehicles in its class, and not a competitor for more practical vehicles at half the price.
I won't buy a Corvette, and I don't buy into the current value system of our nation. We are sadly fallen, fake certain, fake prosperous, fake safe. I hope our electorate will wake up to the dysfunction, recognize it as our problem, not Washington's, and fix things from the ground up. Time to take a loss on the Corvette and sell it, time to stop playing Batman in a batmobile.
Ted
I have a Z4 with a soft top. It is small, agile and has everything I want in a fun vehicle- convertible, leather (red in this case), manual transmission, wood dash. For all that I love my Z4, I have lusted after a Corvette for nearly 20 years, and every time I drive or sit in one, I come away grateful for my choices.
The newer generation Corvettes are big cars, but they are not big on the inside. The interior is actually less spacious than my Z4- less leg room, less head room. It feels not like an aircraft cockpit (that favorite word for drivers looking for a certain type of car) but like the interior of a space capsule. Its door sills are impossibly wide. It is a great big car with no interior space, not very nice leather and no wood. It is not for me. My ongoing fantasy, however, of wanting a Corvette, is relevant to this blog post.
More and more cars today look like space ships, or Buck Rogers props. Here is the Corvette-
Here is the new Ford GT-
Here is the current McLaren-
Here is the batmobile-
I really don't see much difference. Scoops, oil coolers, big tires, seats for two. Crazy buyers....
These are not practical cars. While admitting practicality is not high on the list of attributes for a sports car, there is a point of no return from inanity. Not only are most of these vehicles incredibly expensive, they are impossible to service, hard to get in and out of, get lousy gas mileage (the Corvette is a notable exception to this) and are outrageous to insure.
They represent to me a society increasingly out of touch with its own reality. In the hierarchy of needs transition from walking to a buggy to a car there is an obvious rapid increase in functionality. These vehicles are just the opposite. All practical function is gone; they are a status (and sexual) show item. Just so with our society.
We want to stop racism. We create hiring advantages, and school advantages. Now in those same schools students scream for safe zones to protect them from dangerous ideas. Anything challenging certain orthodox beliefs about society is hate, or a micro-aggression, or racist/sexist, religiously biased. Just like the cars we build, we have moved from an increase in opportunity for all to a strident, functionless 'utopia' where victim status is the path to attention. It is the same with our foreign policy. We advocate peaceful solutions with people who are actively trying to destroy us. We have forgotten that good fences make good neighbors, and not everyone uses a swimming pool for the same thing.
Our fantasy, Batman world asserts that labor is worth 15 dollars per hour but that wealth gained through effort is wrong, that anyone can be successful except for rampant racism and sexism, that all people are equal, and that equality is measured by outcome, not spirit (no spirit please. Talking about God is a macro-aggression). Healthcare is a right but not one we want to pay for, freedom is a right we don't have to fight for, speech is a right, but only as long as I say what you believe.
A Corvette is bigger than a Z4 while being less comfortable, screams status of a type while having no amenities, and is said to be cheap when it costs 65,000.00 for the base model. It is all flash without substance, not really a competitor for far more sophisticated vehicles in its class, and not a competitor for more practical vehicles at half the price.
I won't buy a Corvette, and I don't buy into the current value system of our nation. We are sadly fallen, fake certain, fake prosperous, fake safe. I hope our electorate will wake up to the dysfunction, recognize it as our problem, not Washington's, and fix things from the ground up. Time to take a loss on the Corvette and sell it, time to stop playing Batman in a batmobile.
Ted
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