Work by Ron Cobb
While I can afford it, I intentionally have the smallest, most efficient vehicle I can possibly get away with owning while still meeting my mandatory social requirement of having a vehicle.
Due to a lack of public transportation, it is required. There’s no other practical means I can use to do the 45 minute commute to work, short of perhaps buying a motorcycle which puts me at risk due to the predominance of huge SUVs. I’ve considered an E bike, but we don’t even have sidewalks on this route.
I just can’t swallow investing in something that either sits outside or sits in traffic. I don’t use half of what that little four banger is capable of.
I always wondered that. Like why have 400 hpwr if there is no opportunity to use it.
Fast cars are fun to drive (if you are blissfully ignorant of how dangerous speeding is), but knowing what I know now, it is scary how easy it is to drive a fast car recklessly. I don’t have a source at hand, but I’d bet money that high HP cars kill children and pedestrians at higher rates than small eco cars do.
They are fun to drive! However, you really need to have room for it IMHO like some open or back roads to drive on. If you don’t live near many of those then that’s definitely something to consider. Getting to the bumper of the car in front of me faster is less interesting.
People don’t buy these cars and worry about the fact that it’s parked in the driveway or that it’s stuck in traffic during the week.
It’s bought because it’s something they want and they enjoy owning, and because they can fully utilize the power in the evenings or weekends.
Just enjoy your life, buy what you want. Stop worrying about how much it gets used.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Spend your money where it makes you happy. I’d feel more sympathetic if I didn’t feel compelled to own one when it’s not something that brings me joy.
I kind of think of it like owning a high-end smartphone. Practically speaking maybe it doesn’t make as much difference as a more cost-effective option, but if it makes you happy, by all means. Life is short. But I can still just manage to get by without a smart phone these days if I wanted to do that. I can’t say the same for a vehicle.
i thought they bought these cars to compensate for erectile dysfunction 🤷
As someone who has a big guilty pleasure for sports/performance cars and racing in general, this comic actually explains really well how I’m able to reconcile that with my dislike of car-centric infrastructure and wishing for better public transportation: without other means for getting around cities for people who don’t care much about cars (i.e. most people), everyone will be forced to use cars for basic transport, meaning really clogged highways and traffic jams that directly affect you and your fancy sports car’s enjoyment.
Conversely, if infrastructure was more accommodating for bikes, trains and buses to make them more viable, most people would use them, leaving the streets and highways freer for you to have fun driving your sports car the way it was meant to, instead of being stuck in traffic jams most of the time.
I just wish most people who are into cars realized this, instead of raving about how “they want to take away our cars!” and fellating Andrew Tate and other shitheads.
Why aren’t sport cars rented instead of sold? Only place you can really use them is the race track.
Lots of racetracks sell packages like this, pay $$ to take out a certain car or groups of cars. But for lots of people it’s just as much about the tuning/improving of their own car as it is about the driving.
Au contraire, my Fuck Cars fellow. A sports car’s agile handling and peppy acceleration are enjoyable even at street legal speeds. They are of course most enjoyable when driven nearer to the limits at a track, but most stock “sports cars” require some modifications to be reliably driven under such intense conditions.
think, for a moment, about the world you’re leaving to the future.
is it really worth peppy acceleration when you KNOW that is wasteful and literally costing your children? Because that’s who’s gonna pay that bill. Not you or me. Our kids and grandkids.
cars for fun made sense before we understood the actual costs.
these days it just seems gross, you got yours, fuck everyone else.
Buy and rent?
No, seriously. Guzzle more gas, prone to dangerous driving. Thus my idea to only rent them at race tracks.
I feel like a more accurate (though much less catchy) name for this community would be !fuckcarcentricsociety. Cars are awesome! They’re fun to drive, feats of engineering, and in the right conditions like a rollercoaster without tracks. They just fucking suck when they’re practically required to live. I’m as big a proponent for public transit, you shouldn’t need a car to get to your job or grocery store, but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
strong disagree. perhaps in the 60s and 70s - before we understood that ICE was spewing carbon dioxide and ruining the ecosystem sure.
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
If it were all electric powered by renewable resources harvested nearby I’d have less of an issue, but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children. “Sorry skippy, even we knew, we still didn’t give a fuck to stop the silly games.”
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
While I don’t disagree that spectating races is boring, the amount of CO2 those put out pale in comparison to commutator traffic or the container ships running bunker fuel. We could have EV races and if each manufacturer entered their base models, could help with adoption. We could also make the ICE races run biogas(methane from antibiotic digesters) or biodiesel(tractor pulls could easily adopt that with only a small lowering of performance that all the tractors would share).
but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children.
All consumption is.
Container ships are some of the most efficient things on the planet. Per person f1 has insane output
All consumption is.
consumption for production is one thing, entirely optional, benefitting only one party entertainment coming at the cost of everyone else?
that’s a dick move.
I agree the environmental impacts are certainly an issue, but the emissions from the sport alone aren’t that bad, the worst is from all the travel done on private jets between locations. They’ve also done some work towards being more eco-friendly. The cars run hybrid V6s instead of V10s and by 2026 will use fully renewable biofuel. There’s also Formula E, which is an entirely electric motorsport.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t. It’s simply impossible to get the same amount of power as an F1 car from purely electric propulsion at the same weight.
so you know it’s a problem, you know the sport’s total footprint is the cause, you even point out THEY know it’s wretched and are making half hearted efforts to someday maybe do something.
but you give them your attention.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t.
but it’s entertainment, not some mission critical life saving thing, it’s to watch cars go fast driving in circles.
fuck me, our civilization deserves to collapse.
It’s not even car centric in the US or you would have way more roundabouts instead of traffic lights.
I don’t know what the US is, but it’s shitty for everyone, including cars. The difference is, that cars are comfortable to sit in, but the actual driving is a nightmare compared to Europe. (And walking half a mile in the summer sun from the car to the stadium on a concrete parking lot should be attributed to car centric infrastructure too).
Alternative opinion:
Car companies should stop making normal cars and instead only make hardcore vehicles. I’m talking race cars that are challenging and uncomfortable to drive.
manual only, aggressive clutches, loud gears, stiff suspension, non-adjustable seat, no heat, no ac, no radio, etc.
Then while they’re making this change we expand the shit out of mass transport and infrastructure!
I can assure you that nobody wants to daily drive my race car. lol
I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
But I also want an absolute rehaul of our infrastructure to include high speed rail for the entire country, and comprehensive pricing that is subsidized by the government with my tax money and provided for free if I need it.
I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
I hope you understand that I’m perfectly okay with this and if you posted this to be ironic or snarky… You just made my dick hard and that’s about it.
What? I daily drive a 45mpg Honda fit. It’s the size of a fucking golf cart. But I also tow and have 5 people in my family. I also am in a very high tax bracket. So …you’re wrong?
As someone whose only car is a Honda S2000… yeah kinda.
Do honda s2000s get that bad of gas milage? They’re pretty small, lightweight cars
The engine is pretty high strung so you’re lucky to get 20-24 mpg. If you drive it hard (and it wants to be driven hard) it’s going to be less. That’s still probably better than the kind of huge muscle car in the picture, though.
The other thing is it’s just not a pleasant car to drive in traffic. It’s a manual transmission car (only ever made in manual) and it’s really easy to stall, among other things, so it’s not fun to drive through rush hour.
Ahh, gotcha. Thats a shame, my dream car is a miata which I’ve always wanted to daily drive, and I tend to think of the s2000 similarly since they’re a lot alike in many respects
…i’m surprised to read that; my elise and MX-5s all get around thirty miles per gallon on the street, it’s only on tracks where fuel economy drops precipitously…
