Every time I'm on the road with my little Cavalier, I am driving the smallest car on the road. No kidding, I'm the little prehistoric shrew surrounded by gigantic dinosaurs. Some the SUVs and trucks are twice the size of my car. And the Cavalier isn't even a subcompact, it's only slightly smaller than a midsize sedan. And every time I notice this, I ask the same question: what cultural impulse is pushing this trend toward gigantism in American cars?
It sure can't be from need, unless you haul around five-ton safes on a regular basis, or transport ten people at a time - but I know you're not doing that. I've been watching you. These giants of the highway never have even the tiniest bit of cargo in the back - there's never more than one person inside. Most of them don't even have trailer hitches on the back, so you're not hauling anything either.
This may make some bizarre cultural sense, but it's just crazy if evaluated from any other angle. The purchase price of these vehicles is so high compared to a small truck or a compact car, why get one? Do gigantic Americans need the interior room? I'm 6-4 and I've always driven small cars or station wagons. I fit fine inside them. Besides, most of the people I spy inside these monsters are of average height and girth.
The mere existence of these brontosaurs of the road offends my logical mind, trained as it was by years of staring at Vulcans in Star Trek episodes. And they kept getting bigger, too, in response to this incomprehensible cultural impulse in the American psyche.
Can't we behave with just a little more rationality? Can we bring economic, environmental, and national considerations to our choices? Even in terms of family or personal finance, they don't make sense. Must we always be the prey of our impulses? Our silly cultural outliers?
Now we face an increasingly unstable Middle East, the crisis driven in large part by our own leaders. Leaders who don't understand reason, logic, negotiation, strategy, or even common sense. The result? Panic in the oil markets, rising prices. And every American who drives a behemoth is now yanked back to reality.
Understanding reality is a good thing, even if the economic price of that understanding is a little painful.
Welcome to the real world.