Why such a short car rental you might ask? We arrived on our flight back from Israel at ~5 or 6 AM on a Sunday morning. Public transportation back home was going to be a few hours and a cab ride was likely to be around $45 plus tip or you could get a private limo for $65 plus tip or... you could just rent a car and return it the same day for less than $40 and an additional 30-ish minutes of your jet lagged, half asleep time. Which is exactly what my wife and I did. That being said, I was perhaps not as attentive to car deals as I might be.
Power. Well this accelerated well. And quite quickly up to the speed limit and then you had to back off. It was very quiet and rather plush. The space as compared to the Hyundai i20 I'd been driving for 2.5 weeks was enormous. Trunk, cockpit, back seats, and car were all huge in comparison.
Feedback from the hands on the wheel or butt in the seat was dead, or maybe I was dead, again, looooong flight back from Israel, was rather tired, not sure.
It was very gas and steer commuter car which I suppose would be pleasurable if I was into that kind of thing. It's very quiet, sound deadening was really good, which was perhaps part of the reason why I ended up north of the posted speed limit and had to back down is because there was no real engine, exhaust, road, or wind noise to give notice of what you were doing. At the same time as there isn't really much to be found in this car in the ways of "the thrills of driving" I'd rather just take a train or a bus, or maybe my bike.
The reality is there's a difference between driving a car that's fun and gives a thrill and then there are cars that are bland commuters. And bland commuters without character, without passion or anything fun about them, are really just about your own personal driving bubble. People always thump their chest and say "freedom!" but is gridlock and all that really freedom? And I like the freedom of having a car for back road punts and sometimes getting to obscure destinations but most of the time I could probably do just as well to live within walking distance of a grocery store and use a Zip car or rental on the rare occasion I need a car. Well, except that most of the USA isn't really laid out for that. More or less there are always compromises.
To put an alteration on a phrase passed around the car enthusiast community, the phrase being "Life is too short to drive boring cars!" I'd like to propose "The environment is too precious to drive boring cars." Because, while I'm being a hypocrite in my 2 door sports car (that can only real return 34 ish MPG if the highway conditions are just right), my car has that "thrill of driving". This car didn't. Cars like this, and there are a lot of them, are the ones I really hope to see go when we have all those smart transportation systems. When you can summon that little automated electric self-driving whatever it will be to take you and, hopefully because we are finally ride sharing more, your family / friends / coworkers from point A to B with even less connection to the wheels or chassis because now no one even needs to depress pedals or hold a wheel. In such a world you'll still be able to scratch your privacy itch without all the environmental and material waste of the isolated privileged "freedom" box that are most cars.
Right, rant over. Pictures. Funny thing about these, most were taken without the auto-focus on so many are just a bit out of focus. But again, tired, jet lagged, and whatever.
Am I being overly harsh? Probably.
Was it a nicer car than the Hyundai i20? Probably.
And maybe I was just tired and jet lagged but I felt like this car had no character and is really just about going from A to B and nothing else.
No comments:
Post a Comment