An old comic still relevant

While I can afford it, I intentionally have the smallest, most efficient vehicle I can possibly get away with owning while still meeting my mandatory social requirement of having a vehicle.

Due to a lack of public transportation, it is required. There’s no other practical means I can use to do the 45 minute commute to work, short of perhaps buying a motorcycle which puts me at risk due to the predominance of huge SUVs. I’ve considered an E bike, but we don’t even have sidewalks on this route.

I just can’t swallow investing in something that either sits outside or sits in traffic. I don’t use half of what that little four banger is capable of.

I always wondered that. Like why have 400 hpwr if there is no opportunity to use it.
- Fast cars are fun to drive (if you are blissfully ignorant of how dangerous speeding is), but knowing what I know now, it is scary how easy it is to drive a fast car recklessly. I don't have a source at hand, but I'd bet money that high HP cars kill children and pedestrians at higher rates than small eco cars do.
People don't buy these cars and worry about the fact that it's parked in the driveway or that it's stuck in traffic during the week.

It's bought because it's something they want and they enjoy owning, and because they can fully utilize the power in the evenings or weekends.

Just enjoy your life, buy what you want. Stop worrying about how much it gets used.
- I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Spend your money where it makes you happy. I’d feel more sympathetic if I didn’t feel compelled to own one when it’s not something that brings me joy.
  
  I kind of think of it like owning a high-end smartphone. Practically speaking maybe it doesn’t make as much difference as a more cost-effective option, but if it makes you happy, by all means. Life is short. But I can still just manage to get by without a smart phone these days if I wanted to do that. I can’t say the same for a vehicle.
- i thought they bought these cars to compensate for erectile dysfunction 🤷
- First two sentences sound very much like an advertisement.

As someone who has a big guilty pleasure for sports/performance cars and racing in general, this comic actually explains really well how I'm able to reconcile that with my dislike of car-centric infrastructure and wishing for better public transportation: without other means for getting around cities for people who don't care much about cars (i.e. most people), everyone will be forced to use cars for basic transport, meaning really clogged highways and traffic jams that directly affect you and your fancy sports car's enjoyment.

Conversely, if infrastructure was more accommodating for bikes, trains and buses to make them more viable, most people would use them, leaving the streets and highways freer for you to have fun driving your sports car the way it was meant to, instead of being stuck in traffic jams most of the time.

I just wish most people who are into cars realized this, instead of raving about how "they want to take away our cars!" and fellating Andrew Tate and other shitheads.

Why aren't sport cars rented instead of sold? Only place you can really use them is the race track.
- Lots of racetracks sell packages like this, pay $$ to take out a certain car or groups of cars. But for lots of people it's just as much about the tuning/improving of their own car as it is about the driving.
- Au contraire, my Fuck Cars fellow. A sports car's agile handling and peppy acceleration are enjoyable even at street legal speeds. They are of course most enjoyable when driven nearer to the limits at a track, but most stock "sports cars" require some modifications to be reliably driven under such intense conditions.
- You can do both!

I feel like a more accurate (though much less catchy) name for this community would be !fuckcarcentricsociety. Cars are awesome! They're fun to drive, feats of engineering, and in the right conditions like a rollercoaster without tracks. They just fucking suck when they're practically required to live. I'm as big a proponent for public transit, you shouldn't need a car to get to your job or grocery store, but you can't look at something like F1 and say that's not exhilarating.

but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.

strong disagree. perhaps in the 60s and 70s - before we understood that ICE was spewing carbon dioxide and ruining the ecosystem sure.

Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.

If it were all electric powered by renewable resources harvested nearby I'd have less of an issue, but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children. "Sorry skippy, even we knew, we still didn't give a fuck to stop the silly games."
- Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
  
  While I don't disagree that spectating races is boring, the amount of CO2 those put out pale in comparison to commutator traffic or the container ships running bunker fuel. We could have EV races and if each manufacturer entered their base models, could help with adoption. We could also make the ICE races run biogas(methane from antibiotic digesters) or biodiesel(tractor pulls could easily adopt that with only a small lowering of performance that all the tractors would share).
  
  but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children.
  
  All consumption is.
- I agree the environmental impacts are certainly an issue, but the emissions from the sport alone aren't that bad, the worst is from all the travel done on private jets between locations. They've also done some work towards being more eco-friendly. The cars run hybrid V6s instead of V10s and by 2026 will use fully renewable biofuel. There's also Formula E, which is an entirely electric motorsport.
  
  There's just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can't. It's simply impossible to get the same amount of power as an F1 car from purely electric propulsion at the same weight.
It's not even car centric in the US or you would have way more roundabouts instead of traffic lights.

I don't know what the US is, but it's shitty for everyone, including cars. The difference is, that cars are comfortable to sit in, but the actual driving is a nightmare compared to Europe. (And walking half a mile in the summer sun from the car to the stadium on a concrete parking lot should be attributed to car centric infrastructure too).
- That's simply the paradox of car-centric design: It also sucks for cars. The only way to actually make driving better is to provide viable alternatives.
Whole online communities are basically !americasucks

I don’t know if it sucks I just merely trust people on this but like it’s annoying that everything is so default country

Alternative opinion:
Car companies should stop making normal cars and instead only make hardcore vehicles. I'm talking race cars that are challenging and uncomfortable to drive.
manual only, aggressive clutches, loud gears, stiff suspension, non-adjustable seat, no heat, no ac, no radio, etc.

Then while they're making this change we expand the shit out of mass transport and infrastructure!

I can assure you that nobody wants to daily drive my race car. lol

I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.

But I also want an absolute rehaul of our infrastructure to include high speed rail for the entire country, and comprehensive pricing that is subsidized by the government with my tax money and provided for free if I need it.
- I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
- Yes and you and i are the 0.1% lol
- You don't take responsibility nor pay for the externalities
One of us!

As someone whose only car is a Honda S2000... yeah kinda.

Do honda s2000s get that bad of gas milage? They're pretty small, lightweight cars
- The engine is pretty high strung so you're lucky to get 20-24 mpg. If you drive it hard (and it wants to be driven hard) it's going to be less. That's still probably better than the kind of huge muscle car in the picture, though.
  
  The other thing is it's just not a pleasant car to drive in traffic. It's a manual transmission car (only ever made in manual) and it's really easy to stall, among other things, so it's not fun to drive through rush hour.

The groceries in the passenger seat are a nice touch, because of course there's gonna be no trunk space.

Instead of a macho man forging their destiny, it is a woman, given that it is the 70s, likely a housewife, coming home from grocery shopping.
- How do you know she's not a macho man forging his destiny as a housewife?
And doing groceries or work-related is why most people drive.

How I felt last week in my busted up 350k miles shitbox when there was a Lamborghini and Ferrari beside me crawling through traffic. Even once we were out of gridlock their average speed was probably the exact same as mine. My car costs probably 500 dollars and there's cost literally a 1000 times more than that. Made me feel good. Also made me feel like ramming them just because

As it turns out, road speed is limited by laws, safety and traffic, not the HP of your car engine.
- At least in my state, traffic tends to be the only inhibitor
- Which perhaps makes the purchase more justifiable in Germany when you live within reach of the Autobahn…

I love the groceries in the front seat because there's no room anywhere else.

Even though some sort of trunk or storage could totally fit without increasing the vehicle volume.

That's what I tell people. The reality of driving sucks. You might be in love with your fantasy of a 500 HP beast, but

meanwhile on an open mountain road on a Sunday afternoon

"Woooooo!!!!!"

Where you're driving is as important as what. You'd love to drive a Civic Type R.

In a hospital? Maybe not.
- Nah, FL5 Type 5 has hill assist, rev match, anti stall, and brake lock. With really comfy bucket seats. At speed you got Honda's removedin adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist. It's as comfortable as a manual car can be for commuting and traffic. 10/10 would recommend as daily driver.
- The fact that it needs to be open means 99% of people can't be there, which includes 98% of 500 HP car owners.

1969 and it is still relevant.

Murica

The slowest common denominator decides how much man you are heh

lol front car is Trauma B

I’ve always wanted to do this in video form - have a montage of heroic car ads that just crossfade together with tons of shots of those gas guzzlers sitting at red lights and in traffic.

Please do, curious to see what it'd result in.

This is why people have a commuting car and a track car. Your track car is often not your commuting car

Easy peasy, let's simply all own a commuting car and a race car. /s
- Why not?

Y'all pretend roads outside the city and weekends don't exist. My commute is a joy.

Most people live in a city, and are therefore subject to traffic like this.
- https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/
  
  Wrong. Individually Urban neighborhoods were about 100M. See what you have done is combined urban and suburban populations like it's a political map. But the suburban population of the US is 175M with rural adding 46M.
  
  So no, most of the US, does not experience this nor do they live in a city. They probably live near a city.
Exactly, the comic is showing an urban driver's problem. Fortunately the USA is massive and we have many more uncrowded roads across its vast and beautiful landscape that drivers can travel freely upon. Traffic jams are rare in my area, but occasionally I visit Atlanta or some similarly large city and marvel at how much it sucks to drive in their traffic.

True freedom includes having room to breathe and roam. For those who haven't experienced it, my condolences.
Something tells me you drink and drive

Is the "Fire Storm" Emblem on the front of the car on the billboard making the whole thing look AI generated, or am I getting paranoid? Or maybe both?

AI with a copyright and signature?

http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2014/05/on-strips-ron-cobb.html?m=1
Whole set of panels from the author here. These are very old stuff (take a look at the Politics section, it is filled with references to 60s and 70s era US; therefore I guess this too was made much before).
- Ron MF Cobb!
  One of the greats of concept art, and a true inspiration.
  RIP
I think they're playing off the vanity of the car makers and owners wanting everyone to know exactly what car it is.
- I think they mean how the F on the billboard melted