Before I begin this rant I should say that I am a car fan, but not a car nut. I watch Top Gear religiously, but have never picked up an auto magazine. I believe that certain autos like the Bugatti Veyron are works of high art, the pinnacle of technology and style. I also appreciate, but could never love, the common Toyota Camry for being an affordable low maintenance A to B device that does what it was built to do with a minimum of fuss and flash.
I understand that certain cars are built for certain purposes. The Rav4 is an acceptable small SUV that is popular for a reason. It is perfect for an urban couple that needs more space than the average sedan can offer. It’s also about as useful as tits on a bullfrog for a suburban family of four with a couple labrador retrievers. Likewise, the Escalade, a honkin Deathstar, seems out-of-place anywhere; lunky in urban tight spaces and not utilitarian enough to perform the duties an SUV was designed to do. It was designed to haul around rapstars and Jersey Shore wannabe mafiosi and as such has become a parody of its original form and function. (re: the Hummer and “rugged individualists”.) UGH.
I like the IDEA of hybrids (or hydrogen, or all-electric or magical unicorn piss or whatever) but reality keeps intruding on my potential ardor. I see concept cars that look cooler than early Tarantino and then when they are produced they are about as exciting as a weekend at your grandma’s listening to her natter about her Hummel figurines.
The Prius is the most successful. It’s certainly not offensive in any tangible way. (Other than the inevitable Greenpeace bumper stickers and the smirky smiles on the self-righteous ponytailed asshats that pilot them. ) The design could be called “instantly forgettable”, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it aint making me rush out to buy one either. They cost quite a bit more than a comparably equipped all gas Toyota, but if people want a chimeric feel-good totem that accomplishes nothing, then good for them.
The Nissan LEAF is so estrogen soaked that it makes those little flower vases in the revamped VW Beetles look like turnbuckles in a WWE ring. It makes the Prius look like a monster truck. They should decal an enormous labia on the hood. There are even cute little LED leafs on the dash that helpfully inform you that you are saving the bat-eared Tasmanian anteater every time it switches to battery power. I suppose this is all well and good, and I’m not dense about niche marketing, but I could never drive a car that makes me feel like I am wearing a sundress and a pair of cute but sensible pumps.
Then there is the fever dream called the Chevy Volt. This is a car that appeals to NO ONE. An unholy union of the bailout, wonky academic lecturing about what the American public SHOULD BE DRIVING IF THEY ONLY KNEW WHAT WAS GOOD FOR THEM, bloated unions, piss poor rushed design, horrific management, hastily retooled lines and what can only be described as a sardonic sense of humor.
There have been many bad American cars. The Pacer, the Gremlin, the Pinto. Iacocca’s boxy K-Cars. (although they at least were easy to work on, which one had to do often.) More recently there was the Pontiac Aztec, a design so bad that they were at one time the LEAST stolen car in America.
But nothing comes close to the perfect storm of craptacularness that is the Volt.
The Volt concept car wasn’t rancid (although the presentation captured above should have been a huge clue) but something funny happened on the way to the Forum. The original design was scrapped and the cracker jack GM arteests went to work with predictable dismal result. It’s not exactly feminine, but neither is it male. It’s a cringing whelp that needs a third bathroom.
It gets 40 MILES to a charge. New suggested catchphrase: Chevy Volt! “Explore Your Block!”
Both the Prius and Leaf are far superior.
It seats FOUR because of the enormous, ungainly battery that awkwardly splits the back seat. The Prius and Leaf seat five.
It costs 41 thousand dollars. (Stop. Let that sink in.) The New York Times review said that it had the “fit, finish and feel of a fifteen thousand dollar car.” It has less space inside than the Chevy “Cruise” which when loaded costs less than 20K.
The gas engine only takes PREMIUM. (Let THAT sink in.)
The performance and handling are “sub par”. (Car and Driver) The reliability is unknown. The Lithium battery was produced in a Korean plant subsidized by 150 million in hasty, willy-nilly stimulus cash. I can’t help but be gobsmacked by 150 million tax payer dollars going to a factory in Korea to make a questionable battery for a car that no one is going to buy.
The first “few thousand” (no specifics) will receive a FREE home charging station! (Hells to tha yeees, but wait.) After that, it will be an extra charge. (Again undetermined, but probably around a grand.) This is a “dedicated system”, meaning that one must have special converters, etc to charge. It would seem to be like buying a very expensive toy, with a rare battery type and finding out you need to buy an entire separate kit just to make the thing do anything other than look pretty in the box.
To recap: 1) It looks like a bowl of fuck. 2) It has less performance than its rivals. 3) It costs thousands more than said rivals. 4) It’s gonna fall apart like a Chinese wristwatch. 4) Did I mention it costs more, thousands more?
A GM internal marketing memo revealed this week states: “The major target is Southern California…more specifiically CELEBRITIES that want to make a statement.” That’s exactly what I want for my tax dollars. Ashton Kutcher parking one of these publicly funded abortions in his cavernous Malibu garage next to the smokin Aston Martin and pulling it out when he wants to lecture me on my carbon footprint, then going back home to his palatial mansion on the Pacific and banging Demi in the infinity pool, snacking on sushi and jetting off to Cannes to preen and promote his next idiotic movie. Your tax dollars in action. This is retard GENIOUS.
What’s not to love????
Finally, if all that didn’t make you weep for the future of GM under union and government control, there is the matter of ACTUAL cost. GM was the recipient of 50 BILLION bailout dollars. The actual total when you count all the back alley siphoning is close to 80 Billion. We get the VOLT?
At least when the Soviets made the Lada, it had a certain “common man” sense. It was a coal belching two-stroke made out of soup cans and cheap plastic. You could repair it with a pair of pliers, scrap rubber and tin snips. The Germans nationalized their main car company and developed the Volkswagen, a simple design that was still viable decades later. (I was driving, and working on, a perfectly roadworthy 1965 Bug in 1984)
On the other hand, the entirely subsidized, highly questionable Korean battery pack that can take you 10 miles away before you need to limp home, glancing constantly at the dash, will cost you at least 5K to replace.
And this is the core of my philosophical problem. If we are going to attempt to socialize the auto industry, wouldn’t the first statement be to make it affordable for the masses? It’s not so bad to make it ugly or rickety or unpleasant to drive. (although I will admit that I do not lie awake at night hoping for any combination of the previous three.)
But to have a car that costs more than an entry-level Mercedes, BMW or Audi, that looks and feels like an unfinished first year Prius, and pricing it so far out of the market that you have to offer a $7500 tax “credit” (again, funded by tax payer dollars. *SIGH*) to the very people who are funding this crap while marketing it to clueless Hollywood millionaire celebs is the Audacity Of Hope that only government can attempt. Surely, US automakers have had their ups and downs. Glorious success and deep, deep failure. But I can’t think of any other car that costs this much, delivers so little, slaps me in the face, lectures me, hoovers my wallet and falls apart quicker. I’m a dick if I don’t buy this, and a bigger dick if I do. This is WORSE than the Edsel. At least they are collectable. The Volt is destined to disappear into the landscape like one of those biodegradable water bottles you buy for twice as much as you should at Lilith Fair.
And since I am indignant and feeling like elected street urchins picked my pocket, I’d like to poke a hole in the balloon of those that think battery power is better than evil oil. Do you know what it takes to mine Lithium? That shit aint lying around like pine sap. STRIP MINING, bitches. Huge refractories looking like the third installment of Lord Of The Rings. ORCS and rigs and molten ore and blasting mountains. Tons of raw material distilled to make a few grams of usable metal. I’m not a fan of sending billions of dollars to unrepentant fundamentalist nomads creating distorted societies and creating wackadoo power bases whose potential in the future I can but dimly contemplate, but I can’t see, at this moment, how whiffy, feel-good, market distortions are gonna make anything better for me or anyone else.
I guess we could all suffer together, driving clusterfuck government crap cars, piling into centrally planned crap government light rail, living in crumbling bullshit government planned concrete box housing, eating officially approved diets and working for a benevolent state. It worked so well for Rumania.
The Chevy Volt is a harbinger. Horrific elitist coffee klatch planning for the masses with no intentions of making theirselves confirm to the same standard. They are all Ivy elites and have no clue about struggling to make the rent. When I see Congress shuttling around in this dippy claptrap car I’ll consider it. I have no idea why these Douche Lords that are supposed to be simple representatives of the people (public servants! HA!) get to ride around like Caliphs and I need to buy an overpriced piece of union shit that falls apart when I floor it on the onramp.
If you are pissed at me, YOU go buy a Volt. We’ll compare notes a couple of years in the future. Was I wrong?
If the Volt is the particular new-Left American voice of the potential of the combination of government intervention in the private sector, and I think it is, then I don’t want anything to do with it ever, under any circumstance. It is neutered, beaten, a joke. I’m not some xenophobic numbnut, but I am very aware of the importance of competiveness. If we can’t make a car better than the Volt with BILLIONS of dollars being poured into it, then we are fucked beyond recognition and must prepare to relinquish our place at the forefront of world society.
It’s that simple and that sad.
Matt
john
Shawn
