To the list of things busybody poke-noses want you to stop doing, add this: driving cars with decent acceleration.
You shouldn’t be driving at all, of course; you should be packed in a train somewhere with your headphones on, listening to a podcast about composting, your reusable burlap bag at your feet. If you’re driving, you’re a solipsistic menace, encased in your private world, able to sing to the radio or just enjoy your own company without the aroma of some fellow next to you who apparently replaced his own plasma with Old Spice.
If you do drive, you should at least have the decency to restrain your id. Yes, that’s the problem: the American id, that irrational child-monster ever in search of new sensations and transitory gratification.
The Boston Globe: “We can have far more efficient cars. It’ll just take an honest reckoning with the American driver’s id. We step on the gas — and want results. In much of the world, fighting pollution and climate change are a higher priority than having passenger vehicles that accelerate from zero to 60 in the shortest possible time span.”
In much of the world, water gives you cholera. So?
A few weeks ago, I went car shopping, and a salesman immediately attached to me like a lovesick lamprey. “Ah, I see you’re looking at the new all-electric Blerg. What’ll it take to get you into this car?”
A pistol and a stack of Russian kompromat, pal. What’s that over there?
He showed me how the trunk door opened, pointed out the Bluetooth-enabled glove compartment. The usual. Fine. But.
How fast does it go? Better yet, how quickly does it go fast? When I step down on the accelerator, I want the faces on the money in my wallet to ripple with g-forces. The time I spend getting up to the speed limit is time that could have been spent exceeding the speed limit.
He said the car has the new EcoBoost feature. I assured him that I was not looking for anything with “eco” in the name, and he was surprised: “Why?”
Because if it says “eco,” then it’s meek-o, I assume. The Left would like me to be sitting passively in a self-driving plastic pod, hands in my lap, staring straight ahead with the happy Xanax smile of someone who’s finished thinking about inclusive sustainability and is now contemplating sustainable inclusivity. Get my drift? I don’t want eco. I want a car that leaps forward like a caged circus animal with a grievance, not one that lumbers into the intersection like a polar bear trying to step off an ice floe. And you know why he’s trying to leave the floe? Because it’s melting, thanks to my car. What do you have in that line?
As the salesman explained, “EcoBoost” is actually a name for a turbocharger/direct-injection technology that just uses less gas. Turbo? Awesome.
I’ve had two cars with turbo, both manual transmission, and there was nothing quite like revving it up, dropping into fourth gear, and shouting “Ludicrous speed” as your skull was pressed against the headrest.
So they gave it the name “EcoBoost” to make it sound green, I gather. The credulous will think, “Oh, it uses botanical essences to power the . . . the cylinder thingies.” Great. A car that has to lie to me. Look, if you have a turbocharger, name the danged car the “Ford Priapus” and post specs like “9.3L id-injector that sprays testosterone into the fuel mixer,” because that’s what a lot of drivers want. Me go fast now.
“But . . . what about fuel efficiency?” he asked.
Well, friend, let me tell you something. I came of age during the Oil Scarcity crisis, when you pushed your car to the station once a week so that the attendant could squeeze an eyedropper’s worth into your tank, and we were told we’d all be riding horses by 1981. Now we’re swimming in the stuff, and, to be honest, I’m not so sure oil isn’t produced by some subterranean process we don’t yet understand. It’s possible. I certainly don’t believe it’s all dinosaur carcasses. Call me mad, but I think we’ll crack the cold-fusion problem before we run out of Satan’s Ichor, and then electric cars will be cheap.
Let me ask you something, Mr. Salesman: Do you think the Saudi crown prince would be repositioning his kingdom to accommodate modernity if he thought oil would be rare and expensive? Do you think it’s coincidence that America ramps up its energy production and then AMC starts to open movie theaters showing western flicks in the Kingdom? Huh?
Pause. “It comes standard with satellite radio, which a lot of people find useful.”
No! Speed, man, speed! Jackrabbit starts on the green light! Tire-degrading peel-outs! Does it move?
Okay, I exaggerate a tad. Several tads. But that was the basic tenor of the talk: Does it go fast? Well, it has EcoBoost. In the old days the salesman would pat the hood and say you could punch this baby and five seconds later Sputnik would bounce off your bumper.
There’s nothing wrong with car companies’ making electric vehicles and efficient little pods — if people want them. Let the market speak. But it is characteristic of our times to sniff and sigh at the primal desire for speed and rear away horrified at the thought of burly dudes and whee-ha mamas cheering on the throaty roar of an American engine, ready to leap, race, compete, and prevail.
Never trust the people who pathologize joy. Life’s short. Turn up the radio, rev up the engine. Floor it.