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• Thursday, June 11, 2009 01:13 PM

  Gary Kamiya's Insecurities

  I've always felt that personal attacks against the author of an article are off limit and usually irrelevent, but I feel like I have to make an exception here. Kamiya seems like a guy harboring a lot of resentment because he was left out of the supposedly manly American car-culture over the last few decades, and those insecurities are manifesting themselves in the little tirade we see today.

  Where did this car culture come from? One source: economics. Not so long ago, it was a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to fix your own car than to take it to the shop or buy a new one. My small hometown didn't have a movie theater but we had four auto parts stores. Naturally the next step beyond fixing a car is to tweak it so that it performs better. It was a male thing because fixing mechanical things had traditionally been a man's job.

  American cars were easier to work on than European cars. This was one advantage of being huge, although I literally had to climb on top of the engine to fix the timing in my '69 GTO, which was a pain. Because they were easier to work on, it was easier to sell and to buy used American cars. Also, thick Detroit steel held up a lot better than the tin foil the imports used.

  The big fact that Kamiya ignores is that this "phallic" car-culture started dying years ago when American cars became too complicated to work on -- when plugging the car into a computer for a diagnosis replaced analyzing the smells and sounds coming out of it. The hot rod culture got replaced by the SUV culture, which emphasized armor over driving skill to keep yourself safe. And the soccer moms co-opted it all anyway.

  My GTO got 6 mpg (11 mpg highway) and I couldn't afford to drive it twenty years ago, and I wouldn't dream about driving it today (if I still had it). It was way fun, but those days were over a long time ago. Now I want something small and zippy and stylish, and if Fiat can deliver something like that, I'll give it a test drive.

  But if they ever come out with an electric car with 450 ft-lbs of torque and 0-60 in 4.5, I'll buy it sight unseen.

  —Mr Smith Read Mr Smith's other letters
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