- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
... is touted as wonderful until it rains.
Or snows (probably the only legit reason).
Or it's "too cold". Then, all of a sudden, it's in the back of the garage until the weather is perfect and the "I hardly ever use it" guzzler is on the road until perfection returns.
I say this as a fairly rabid biker - motorcycle & bicycle, to disambiguate. I have way more miles to my name with 2 wheels than four. Us rabid bikers note each other during the winter, the storms making us haul out our rainsuits and separating the men from the baby boys (and real women from the little girls).
I don't have or need one, but the Smart isn't a bad idea. It's a good option for those people who could get around by two wheels were they up to the weather or simple can't - my gf cannot do two wheels due to a minor visual & inner ear impairment. If she didn't commute with me via motorcycle or tiny Microcar two-seater (a competitor for the Smart in Europe that has a bit more carrying room), a Smart would be okay. I am somewhat disappointed that the diesel isn't available here, but as I understand it that is due to US emission restrictions on the diesel - something which also holds back diesel hybrids. Still, there is no silver bullet to transportation problems, as there is no one single transportation situation. The niche for this will be be big enough.
Americans aren't the only ones who do this, but we do like to make everything single-issue decisions. In this case it's mileage, something everyone ignored even two years ago and now is the *only* thing we care about (although as a few have demonstrated, their one-item is last year's power/speed requirement).
Good article, Farhad. I wish I'd had the chance to check out the car when you offered, as my one experience was in Vancouver and the diesel variant, but I wasn't in the city at the time it was available and driving up there just for the test seemed silly.
