My entire driving career has been based from necessity, I’ve never wanted to “go fast”, look “cool” or use my car to trick girls into liking me: I’ve always driven small– what some would call “sub-compact”–cars. They help air quality, save on fuel and inherently money, but still get me from A to B.
It’s not easy being a young male in blue-collar Ohio: having to wrestle with machinations of being “male” and two-dimensional transparent ideations of masculinity: driving a car that is shorter than me, and not being able to lift more than one-hundred and fifty pounds at a time has been really hard on my self-esteem.
On occasion in Oxford I get a sarcastic “Nice car, bro!” thrown my way, and by “on occasion” I mean “every time I get behind the wheel,”
There is a deep philosophical divide between men who drive “normal” cars; i.e. Camaro, Mustang, Lexus, Audi, Volvo, VW, BMW; between these men and I, stands a divide of moral justification. You want to look really cool– and trust me, you are– while I just want to not be in crippling debt by the time I’m out of college.
To these men; other than allegedly having a small penis, there have to be several other things wrong with driving a sub-compact. I mean, I get to keep a little extra money in my pocket, my dad doesn’t make my car payments, and I can never take anyone out on a date. Which is great, because I get to save even more money. That’s reason enough to hate someone, right?
Aside from the obvious physical debauchery one commits when trying to better the air quality, there is no reason we all shouldn’t drive cars that exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for emissions.
The document said the EPA recommends all American cars to be running at 35.5 MPG by 2016.
By “no reason” I mean there are potentially thousands of dollars in difference as to why one should drive a more efficient car.
A Toyota Prius runs at 24K, a Honda CR-Z runs for 19K, and the Nissan Leaf (which is completely electronic and has no fuel cost what-so-ever) will cost the consumer about 21K.
My current vehicle– A Nissan Versa Note– runs a combined 35, which exceed the emissions standards for 2014, which I plan on keeping for as long as I can, because I don’t need something that growls abhorrently loud and costs double my amount in fuel costs per-year as compared to an average six cylinder vehicle.
The next time some one screams “faggot,” from the window of their gold Lexus RX300, and then proceeds to throw sunglasses at your car on the interstate, flash them the thumbs up: and keep in mind they’re better than you, more attractive, and have a lot more money.
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