Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDon
here's the thing
I like living
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I feel that. Even so, I think that argument isn't entirely appropriate. Many of us are driving older vehicles that couldn't begin to compete in a crash test. What's the rating on your 20-yr-old Benz? I don't doubt it's going to fare better than a contemporary econobox, but will it stack up as well against a 10-yr-old Corolla? Or a brand-new Yaris?
We could take an awful lot of what we've learned about building tough, crashworthy cars and write it very small, pack it into a flyweight package and power it with a super modest engine. 250ccs gets you down the road at ticket-me speeds and delivers fuel economy that we have to sweat bullets to achieve right now, but does it with the AC and stereo on. And all of that can happen inside a shell that keeps you out of the weather and more or less out of some mouthbreathers grille.
Even if I don't take the blue sky approach of imagining a car built to high production standards in the thousands by some corporation like GM, I can still see how it wouldn't be impossible to build a one-off in my backyard that would deliver on some of these potentials. It could provide some crash protection, deliver on the weather protection, and maybe even have AC, but not guarantees on that last.