Another break from politics

I'm not that much of a car guy, but there are some pretty damn big problems with today's average vehicles, folks.

First problem: they're toys. Most cars today have more plastic in them than metal and glass combined, for reasons that I can't understand. Now, sure, plastic looks nice and it don't rust, but if ya ask me, it's a huge design flaw. Because with steel if you get into an accident, your car's dented but it's still roadworthy enough to drive to the repair shop. But let's say you're driving a rice-rocket and you smash into an SUV. Here's what happens: the rice-rocket is completely destroyed. The plastic bends and snaps and the engine gets totaled. Never again will you drive that car, because it's so badly damaged that when you touch it, the doors all fall off. And since it's so compact, when the airbag shoots out it either gives you whiplash or just kills you outright. Metal is tough, plastic is flexible. Which do you want, folks? A strong metal frame that any Jap-crap car will bounce off of, or a weak plastic covering that will mush and quite possibly kill you-but without any of that ugly rusting.

Second problem: they all look the same. Every single car being pumped out these days-except for the really, REALLY expensive ones, look exactly alike in every way. They're all the same buglike, compact, unsafe piles of crap. Driving down the street you can see that one in every twenty cars is unique-the other nineteen are practically indistinguishable, other than, perhaps, their length or their height. Is it just me, or is this a bad idea? I mean, the unique cars are probably going to sell better than the other cars, aren't they? So why not just make each and every car model different in some visible way? Some people can recognize individual cars from the 1960's and 1970's despite the vehicles not being manufactured more than a year apart and being manufactured by the same company. But no one can tell a 1999 PT Cruiser from a 2007 model, now can they?

Third problem: they're too damn complicated. Once-you may find it hard to believe-there was a time when you did not need a PhD in Engineering and Computer Programming to know how to fix a car. As strange as it may sound, if you had engine trouble, all you needed was a toolbox with a ratchet, a few screwdrivers of varying types and sizes, and some wrenches. If you've got a bad carburetor, you either buy a new one or find a matching one somewhere and screw it onto your engine. Next thing you know, your car's working fine and you're cruisin' down the highway.

Nowadays, on the other hand, if the complicated computer that runs your fuel-injected engine has a minor problem, you need to find a way to take it to the car repair shop and have it completely dismantled and put together again. Spending $5000 on this, you then get on the road again only to find that it has another problem, this time not with the computer but with, let's say, the fuel pump. This fuel pump is so well hidden that once more you go to the car repair shop and spend another $5000 dollars on fixing it. Tell me, which of the following cars is superior: the 1964 Impala, or the 2008 Kia? Think about it, folks.