With the death of the Buick Regal TourX (which some may consider a crossover by definition anyway), the American station wagon is now dead. That makes me very sad.
Wait they discontinued that? Damn. Ehh give it 10 years and it'll probably come back, sedans in the midsize segment are making a comeback (See 2020 sonata) and I'd assume if you give it time that'll spawn a wagon.
What I will tell you for sure, is that they are nowhere near as bad as Shotgun Chuck makes them out to be. Not all of them are going to be masterpieces, but not every single one of them are awful either. It's the same as ICE vehicles, some are absolutely incredible, others are worthless pieces of garbage. Some may be unreliable, but I think a lot of them look like they'd be very reliable. This of course depends on the particular unit you purchase. If you purchased two units at two different times, one could probably last for decades, while the other could last for less than a month. It's something that, again, happens with all types of cars. Don't know if this corresponds with reliability, but one thing I know for sure that I'd absolutely love about owning an electric car, is the extra trunk space. Since there isn't a big block of an engine, the space that would be used for one in an ICE vehicle can instead be reserved for trunk space. Example. Not so sure about wind, maybe Austin can fill us in if it can serve a purpose for EVs, but solar power can be extremely good for electric cars, because solar power is converted into electricity, and that can be transferred into an electric car's engine, which means extra power that will keep the car going. That's one reason why the Lightyear One is such an interesting and favorite new electric car of mine, is due to its utilization of solar panels. Because of that, the car can charge itself when parked in the sun. Though it does come at the cost of no windshield mounted rear view mirror, instead it uses cameras as an alternative, and it still has the door mounted mirrors as seen in the picture I provided. I disagree. Some electric vehicles probably are boring, but so are some ICE vehicles. A lot of electric and ICE cars alike really intrigues me. I look forward to the day I finally get to drive an electric car. Good on you for acknowledging that. They are useful in general. Not only for the reasons you established, but also when backing into parking spaces, and in the suburbs, when you're backing out of your driveway. I wish the vehicles in my household had them. Oh boy, watch the f out for the disgusting hobgoblins I like to call Entitled Parents, as documented on r/EntitledParents. Those people could kill just about any type of culture in the world, not just car culture. The kind of people that could put their child in dangerous situations and get full on triggered if you try and point out that they are in danger, you know, like any normal person concerned about a child's safety. The kind that'd blame you if their child got mauled to death by a bear because they were too entitled to tell them not to go near mama bear and her cubs, even though it's basic common sense and basic parenting to tell your child to stay close to you and not try to play with bears. I doubt normal parents could affect car culture all that much, but never underestimate the power of an Entitled Parent. *Childish Gambino intensifies* "A tuna sandwich is killing car culture." I thought American station wagons were already dead? I thought those died off before the turn of 2010, because of minivans.
Technically, it wasn't mainly just minivans (crossovers were definitely starting to dominate over wagons at that time) though.
Are you suggesting that Jeff is worse than a Tacan? *Last time I made a joke like this people thought I was serious, so tried to make it more obvious this time... Well wind and solar are the most portable electricity generation methods I can think of, bar regenerative brakes, ICE generators, and nuclear submarines. Solar panels tend to be heavy and wind turbines aren't pretty, though both are common sights on yachts for anyone that likes to do overnight trips. Personally if I had to choose one safety feature to mandate it would've been Kia's blind spot cameras, not back up cameras. Seems more useful to me, both in terms of how often they are used and how consequential hitting something while backing up is versus merging onto a lane at the wrong time. Karen's against car culture hits home hard here. We use to have a strong car culture on the island and several well known race tracks. Guess why we are down to one, which has less and less events each season? Wealthy Karen's move in next to a race track and complain that race cars are loud. Track gets shut down. People have no where to race and either get a new hobby or drag race down the parkways.
I think some electric cars are boring because of the body style, but that's just my opinion. To be honest, I think modern cars just look boring in general whether they are gas or electric. By the way, I'm fine with your opinion on electric vehicles and modern cars in general. That statement you made about "entitled parents" is really informative. I do have a question though. Have you ever been around an entitled parent in real life? Thank you for the kind words =) Like I said earlier, I do consider some electric cars boring, but I'm not gonna say "Electric cars are boring and that's a fact." It would be really ignorant and closed minded of me to say that. I'm also not gonna claim that it's a fact that modern cars are boring. The statement "modern cars are boring" is just an opinion. It's not a fact. Just because I consider modern cars boring doesn't mean everyone else thinks that. I'm not gonna call out someone for liking modern car body styles. I don't care for them, but I'm totally fine with other people liking them. I believe in something called "accepting other people's opinions whether or not you agree with them". This doesn't just apply to cars. It applies to music, TV, video games, real world stuff, etc. I also don't have a gatekeeper definition of "car culture" and I don't say "[insert this thing here] is killing car culture". Anyways, you make some really good points in your response post to me.
Thankfully no, knock on wood it stays that way, but I always feel for anyone that is. I don't know how I'd react if I ran into a typical entitled parent.
1966, the Paul is dead rumor. I'm not sure if it was a Healey or Mini that Paul crashed that year, I've seen sources say either.
Found a nice field then I pitched a Malibu sideways in it. No e-brake necessary. Don't feel bad for the field. It's owned by a corporation.
Honestly, I feel really bad for the people (you are talking about) that wanted to race on the race track, but couldn't because it got shut down.
Laguna Seca is in the middle of the desert, and people decide to build their dream homes right next to it. Dream homes. Built next to a racetrack. In the middle of nowhere. And they complain about noise.
Every. Single. Time. I get in to my aunts car I fear for my life... There is no number of saftey features that can help them short of pushing them clean out of the car and driving myself. Just puts the car in reverse and speeds out of the driveway without looking because she trusts the backup camera to do everything for her, including drive the car and put it in the right gear.
