The end of high powered cars?

Yeah, sorry. Edited that mistake out.

It's one thing to drop the v8's, but even our turboed i4's aren't close to that milage. Hell, even the normal Mazda3, that I've heard refered to as an 'econobox', only gets 22-32 or something?

its all in the weight, cars will get lighter and use smaller engines. hydrogen rotary (mazda ftw)
 
its all in the weight...

Here's the deal: the U.S. has the most stringent crash and safety standards, necessitating design compromises that add a lot of unnecessary weight. Unfortunately, all these safety doo-dads only mask and serve as a crutch for the real problem: American drivers are wreckless and inattentive. I see it everyday: drivers smoking, drinking, eating, texting, shaving, dialing, iPod'ing... it's really come to the point where Volvo is advertising new tech that beeps when a car is in a blindspot during a lane change and auto-brakes when sensing a potential collision. Really? Wouldn't an attentive driver make such things superfluous?

Once we become as a whole better, more serious drivers, we can all feel better driving smaller, lighter cars and not these behemoth SUVs strictly for the fact that we feel safer on the roads filled with other behemoth SUVs.

Oh, and we really, really need to infuse life back into a transcontinental rail system, the same system that GM derailed (no pun intended) back in the 1920s and is paying back in Karma. This will take a lot of the big rigs off the road, easing congestion and a large dependancy on oil.

[/soapbox]
 
Here's the deal: the U.S. has the most stringent crash and safety standards, necessitating design compromises that add a lot of unnecessary weight. Unfortunately, all these safety doo-dads only mask and serve as a crutch for the real problem: American drivers are wreckless and inattentive. I see it everyday: drivers smoking, drinking, eating, texting, shaving, dialing, iPod'ing... it's really come to the point where Volvo is advertising new tech that beeps when a car is in a blindspot during a lane change and auto-brakes when sensing a potential collision. Really? Wouldn't an attentive driver make such things superfluous?

Once we become as a whole better, more serious drivers, we can all feel better driving smaller, lighter cars and not these behemoth SUVs strictly for the fact that we feel safer on the roads filled with other behemoth SUVs.

Oh, and we really, really need to infuse life back into a transcontinental rail system, the same system that GM derailed (no pun intended) back in the 1920s and is paying back in Karma. This will take a lot of the big rigs off the road, easing congestion and a large dependancy on oil.

[/soapbox]

we just spent $1 trillion (1000 billion) on an economic stimulus bill loaded full of pork. good idea to revive rail, but got ask the chinese, and they'll tell you there's no more money left to borrow.
 
The China One card has been revolked. The only option now is to print money and china is not happy and has warned us not to do this. They hold alot of dollars and they know that printing funny money will make their investment in our dollars worthless. The checks will still have to go out so printing money is the only option. Hyper inflation anyone?
 
The China One card has been revolked. The only option now is to print money and china is not happy and has warned us not to do this. They hold alot of dollars and they know that printing funny money will make their investment in our dollars worthless. The checks will still have to go out so printing money is the only option. Hyper inflation anyone?

si, senor. that's why it's a great time to buy a speed. you'll never see horsepower this high and interest rates this low again for a long time. 2009, say hi to 1973.
 
I'm glad when discussing railroads that you bring up the Chinese. I mean, whatever happened to the long lost art of indentured servitude? We'll raid every laundromat on the West to root out the Chinese, then pubcrawl every bar on the East and round up all the drunk Irish and put them all to work. Hell, we can commemorate the meeting of the two sides by driving a golden spike into the ground.




Wait, I think this may all have been done before...
 

New Threads and Articles

Back