Work by Ron Cobb
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While I can afford it, I intentionally have the smallest, most efficient vehicle I can possibly get away with owning while still meeting my mandatory social requirement of having a vehicle.
Due to a lack of public transportation, it is required. There’s no other practical means I can use to do the 45 minute commute to work, short of perhaps buying a motorcycle which puts me at risk due to the predominance of huge SUVs. I’ve considered an E bike, but we don’t even have sidewalks on this route.
I just can’t swallow investing in something that either sits outside or sits in traffic. I don’t use half of what that little four banger is capable of.
People don’t buy these cars and worry about the fact that it’s parked in the driveway or that it’s stuck in traffic during the week.
It’s bought because it’s something they want and they enjoy owning, and because they can fully utilize the power in the evenings or weekends.
Just enjoy your life, buy what you want. Stop worrying about how much it gets used.
i thought they bought these cars to compensate for erectile dysfunction 🤷
Lmao, no.
People do enjoy fast vehicles. It’s fun.
Still, the culture surrounding spending so much of your money on a depreciating asset just to have fun or maintain appearances is crazy.
Americans are spending $1000/month for 6+ years to drive a car that mostly sits in driveways, parking lots, and traffic.
Most of enjoyment in life is spent around depreciating items that you’ll get no return on: food, entertainment, travel. If you don’t spend your money on enjoyment and focus only on return, what have you done with your life?
Made trillions.
Kidding aside, if the item wasn’t such a significant chunk of one’s earnings and also wasn’t on the never ending purchase cycle perpetuated by advertising and culture I’d feel differently.
Buy a nice car that fits your budget and provides satisfaction. Keep it for long enough that it doesn’t impact your family’s financial stability.
You also are under the assumption that the people who constantly buy new cars can’t afford it. For me, it brings enjoyment (something that is not tangible). I also can afford to buy a new car every few years. I view it as something I take pleasure in similar to eating or traveling.
The other perk about me doing that, is since I eat the depreciation, when I turn it in, someone can buy it for cheaper and drive it until the wheels fall off if they want.
That’s why I keep advising people to buy used, and to be able to pay for any expensive toy fully in cash. It saves so much depreciation money, and causes you to not go into debt over an expensive toy.
But they don’t race them on a track like someone who actually loves speed. They use them as status symbols to flex on the poors.
And yet people get so bent out of shape when I point out that most cars are nothing more than expensive toys for adults.
Nothing inherently wrong with expensive toys for adults. Not my cup of tea, but still.
Agreed, nothing inherently wrong with expensive toys for adults. For instance, I have a sailboat. I just don’t insist that everybody structure their lives and build their world around it.
Not inherently, but the way people drive? Some people definitely treat driving like a literal toy or a video game, and have no respect for how easily you can kill someone. I can’t help but feel like this is a result of american car culture (speaking from an obv american perspective , since the world obv revolves around us /s)
nothing wrong?
what planet do you live on, where pollution isn’t a problem, where they have a clean ocean that’s not so acidic shellfish can’t form their fucking shells?
please, tell me there’s nothing wrong with stealing your enjoyment from the mouths of future generations?
pfft
I was not referring to cars specifically. I was referring to people spending money for things that make them happy.
I thought that was the coal rolling mega trucks the US has? At least I can see past a sea of mustangs or any other sports/muscle car.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Spend your money where it makes you happy. I’d feel more sympathetic if I didn’t feel compelled to own one when it’s not something that brings me joy.
I kind of think of it like owning a high-end smartphone. Practically speaking maybe it doesn’t make as much difference as a more cost-effective option, but if it makes you happy, by all means. Life is short. But I can still just manage to get by without a smart phone these days if I wanted to do that. I can’t say the same for a vehicle.
First two sentences sound very much like an advertisement.
I always wondered that. Like why have 400 hpwr if there is no opportunity to use it.
Fast cars are fun to drive (if you are blissfully ignorant of how dangerous speeding is), but knowing what I know now, it is scary how easy it is to drive a fast car recklessly. I don’t have a source at hand, but I’d bet money that high HP cars kill children and pedestrians at higher rates than small eco cars do.
And trucks are just fast cars with worse handling and braking, and worse outcomes for bystanders in accidents.
They are fun to drive! However, you really need to have room for it IMHO like some open or back roads to drive on. If you don’t live near many of those then that’s definitely something to consider. Getting to the bumper of the car in front of me faster is less interesting.
As someone who has a big guilty pleasure for sports/performance cars and racing in general, this comic actually explains really well how I’m able to reconcile that with my dislike of car-centric infrastructure and wishing for better public transportation: without other means for getting around cities for people who don’t care much about cars (i.e. most people), everyone will be forced to use cars for basic transport, meaning really clogged highways and traffic jams that directly affect you and your fancy sports car’s enjoyment.
Conversely, if infrastructure was more accommodating for bikes, trains and buses to make them more viable, most people would use them, leaving the streets and highways freer for you to have fun driving your sports car the way it was meant to, instead of being stuck in traffic jams most of the time.
I just wish most people who are into cars realized this, instead of raving about how “they want to take away our cars!” and fellating Andrew Tate and other shitheads.
Why aren’t sport cars rented instead of sold? Only place you can really use them is the race track.
Lots of racetracks sell packages like this, pay $$ to take out a certain car or groups of cars. But for lots of people it’s just as much about the tuning/improving of their own car as it is about the driving.
Ok, good point.
Au contraire, my Fuck Cars fellow. A sports car’s agile handling and peppy acceleration are enjoyable even at street legal speeds. They are of course most enjoyable when driven nearer to the limits at a track, but most stock “sports cars” require some modifications to be reliably driven under such intense conditions.
think, for a moment, about the world you’re leaving to the future.
is it really worth peppy acceleration when you KNOW that is wasteful and literally costing your children? Because that’s who’s gonna pay that bill. Not you or me. Our kids and grandkids.
cars for fun made sense before we understood the actual costs.
these days it just seems gross, you got yours, fuck everyone else.
I’m happy to spend my carbon budget on an occasional Sunday cruise with the top down on a sunny afternoon, rather than overseas holidays, excessive consumption, etc. I don’t commute by car, I ride my bike as much as possible, and I advocate for improved public transit infrastructure in my community, which all have a far greater impact than my ~460 kg/year of CO2 from my joyrides.
Isn’t the more significant problem that the 98% of motorists who don’t give a rat’s ass about the driving experience, are effectively forced to drive when they could be taking alternative transport, if the infrastructure supported it?
Please, for the love of God, quadruple the carbon tax and invest it all in public transit, so that cars are treated like the luxury they should be.
Isn’t the more significant problem that the 98% of motorists who don’t give a rat’s ass about the driving experience, are effectively forced to drive when they could be taking alternative transport, if the infrastructure supported it?
I’d say they’re equally problematic - but at least their use case is part of their employment, and not part of their entirely optional entertainment.
certainly agree with the last.
least their use case is part of their employment, and not part of their entirely optional entertainment.
And if they’re driving to an entertainment event, like say a concert, a vacation, or a park, is that any better than me going for a drive for the sake of going for a pleasure cruise of equal distance? Keep in mind that my sports car is no gas guzzler. It gets the same fuel economy as an average, mid-sized sedan, and better than an average SUV or truck which dominate our roads.
If you’re the type that buys their car with the leisure in mind, I’m gonna assume you’re not cost constrained and should be doing more to help the env anyway.
hypotheticals are irrelevant so you do you, have a good life, and when you wake up to the damage you’re doing / have done, do your best to improve things.
You can do both!
Buy and rent?
No, seriously. Guzzle more gas, prone to dangerous driving. Thus my idea to only rent them at race tracks.
You have both options.
One of the big draws to things like muscle/sports cars is customization, and upgrading. You can’t do that with a rental, so one of the biggest portions of that market will be left out.
I feel like a more accurate (though much less catchy) name for this community would be !fuckcarcentricsociety. Cars are awesome! They’re fun to drive, feats of engineering, and in the right conditions like a rollercoaster without tracks. They just fucking suck when they’re practically required to live. I’m as big a proponent for public transit, you shouldn’t need a car to get to your job or grocery store, but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
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but you can’t look at something like F1 and say that’s not exhilarating.
strong disagree. perhaps in the 60s and 70s - before we understood that ICE was spewing carbon dioxide and ruining the ecosystem sure.
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
If it were all electric powered by renewable resources harvested nearby I’d have less of an issue, but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children. “Sorry skippy, even we knew, we still didn’t give a fuck to stop the silly games.”
Today? F1 is a fucking travesty - rich assholes burning crazy amounts of fuel to speed around in circles taking more from future generations every fucking lap.
While I don’t disagree that spectating races is boring, the amount of CO2 those put out pale in comparison to commutator traffic or the container ships running bunker fuel. We could have EV races and if each manufacturer entered their base models, could help with adoption. We could also make the ICE races run biogas(methane from antibiotic digesters) or biodiesel(tractor pulls could easily adopt that with only a small lowering of performance that all the tractors would share).
but anything combusting is a giant middle finger to your own children.
All consumption is.
All consumption is.
consumption for production is one thing, entirely optional, benefitting only one party entertainment coming at the cost of everyone else?
that’s a dick move.
The emissions from 20 cars driving in circles for a few hours a week could continue until the end of humanity and still be just a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of damage the production industry has done up to this point.
bud the bucket overflowed a long, long time ago. now it’s pouring over the rim, and you’re like: eh, it’s just a few thousand tons of CO2 every year, for funsies, it won’t matter.
it all matters. you’re just too vroom vroom to fucking care.
The emissions from the cars themselves isn’t even 2000 tons of CO2. That’s 1/200000 of 1% of annual emissions. If you’re that concerned, you shouldn’t be on this site because the server, your computer, and your router are all adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
it all matters. you’re just too vroom vroom to fucking care.
Sometimes the build race tracks specifically for single races. That’s awful
In the modern world, all consumable products are made with energy from fossil fuels or transported with fossil fuels. You need to be constantly thinking about the supply chain, even if you only use public transportation. Favoring Green or greener options the whole way or simply abstaining from certain optional activities.
oh shit, he’s almost there…
and if those fossil fuels are for ENTERTAINMENT ITS EASY TO REDUCE THE ENTIRE LOAD RIGHT?
COME ON YOU ARE SO FUCKING CLOSE TO WAKING UP
I don’t want to be put on a watch list by mentioning the certain key phrases that I would have to to continue this conversation.
Container ships are some of the most efficient things on the planet. Per person f1 has insane output
But are all the things they transport necessary? Is it necessary for them to burn bunker fuel? Fuel so dirty, they aren’t allowed to burn it near the ports and have to switch to diesel. There’s some effort to design sail container ships, but how much plastic shit or Fast Fashion shit do we need?
Oh certainly not. But they’re certainly still much more worth it overall than an f1 race. I mean, I do have more extremist environment takes. I think fast fashion should be banned and most plastics too just outright
I agree the environmental impacts are certainly an issue, but the emissions from the sport alone aren’t that bad, the worst is from all the travel done on private jets between locations. They’ve also done some work towards being more eco-friendly. The cars run hybrid V6s instead of V10s and by 2026 will use fully renewable biofuel. There’s also Formula E, which is an entirely electric motorsport.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t. It’s simply impossible to get the same amount of power as an F1 car from purely electric propulsion at the same weight.
so you know it’s a problem, you know the sport’s total footprint is the cause, you even point out THEY know it’s wretched and are making half hearted efforts to someday maybe do something.
but you give them your attention.
There’s just some things an ICU can do that an electric motor can’t.
but it’s entertainment, not some mission critical life saving thing, it’s to watch cars go fast driving in circles.
fuck me, our civilization deserves to collapse.
we deserve to collapse because we like to be entertained?
i wonder if what you used to type and send this comment onto the internet uses any sort of battery
we deserve to collapse because we like to be entertained?
when the specific entertainment is dicking around the ONLY FUCKIN’ ATMOSPHERE WE HAVE yeah I think so.
you like the taste of smog? or is it simping for petroleum companies?
Or is the attraction fracking?
Watching the poles melt in real time?
Come on man, which is the part that gives you the entertainment?
the part where the car go fast. DUH!
so why the fuck are you on /fuckcars lol
read the room vroom vroom
You know what, you’re right. Maybe while we’re at it, we should stop going to concerts altogether. Running all those speakers and lights is bound to cause co2 emissions! We should also throw our computers in the trash. Think about all the co2 emissions and our future generations! As a matter of fact, we should go back to living like cavemen.
yeah there’s no difference between art, computation, and FUCKING WATCHING MORONS RACE IN CIRCLES PROPELLED BY TINY EXPLOSIONS
you fucking cannot be that fucking dense
Yeah and songs are just sound. Paintings are just color and paper. Computers are just silicon. Qualia. You may not derive anything out of watching it but for me and many others it is like watching a sport. And the emissions from it are relatively tiny.
It’s not even car centric in the US or you would have way more roundabouts instead of traffic lights.
I don’t know what the US is, but it’s shitty for everyone, including cars. The difference is, that cars are comfortable to sit in, but the actual driving is a nightmare compared to Europe. (And walking half a mile in the summer sun from the car to the stadium on a concrete parking lot should be attributed to car centric infrastructure too).
That’s simply the paradox of car-centric design: It also sucks for cars. The only way to actually make driving better is to provide viable alternatives.
Whole online communities are basically !americasucks
I don’t know if it sucks I just merely trust people on this but like it’s annoying that everything is so default country
Alternative opinion:
Car companies should stop making normal cars and instead only make hardcore vehicles. I’m talking race cars that are challenging and uncomfortable to drive.
manual only, aggressive clutches, loud gears, stiff suspension, non-adjustable seat, no heat, no ac, no radio, etc.Then while they’re making this change we expand the shit out of mass transport and infrastructure!
I can assure you that nobody wants to daily drive my race car. lol
I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
But I also want an absolute rehaul of our infrastructure to include high speed rail for the entire country, and comprehensive pricing that is subsidized by the government with my tax money and provided for free if I need it.
You don’t take responsibility nor pay for the externalities
What? I daily drive a 45mpg Honda fit. It’s the size of a fucking golf cart. But I also tow and have 5 people in my family. I also am in a very high tax bracket. So …you’re wrong?
No
In your ideal scenario, what am I to do? I drive 112 miles a day to commute. And my family needs a tow vehicle, I have 3 kids and a wife. I own a 7 passenger tow machine that often has a stroller occupying the 2 extra seats plus kid extras. I’ve reached the upper middle class tax bracket. I want a rail or bus system to take me to and from work. I want the choice to drive a 12mpg big ass fuck all shitty truck. But I want others to have the choice to take a 0 emissions train to their designated station with 0 emissions golf carts to take them to their jobs. I want the future. A utopia if you will. But I won’t force that. That’s unamerican. Americans need a choice.
Why are you taking it personally? The problem is that the price paid at the pump doesn’t reflect the true cost.
I’m not taking it personal in a negative way. I’m personally taking time to try to talk to you though.
I want all of those things. I can assure you, I want to drive a V8 loud as fuck, manual thick clutched, wide tired, non AC, non radio, rear wheel drive, fucking street menace of a vehicle.
I hope you understand that I’m perfectly okay with this and if you posted this to be ironic or snarky… You just made my dick hard and that’s about it.
I hope you understand that I’m perfectly okay with this
Thanks, cap, I noticed.
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Yes and you and i are the 0.1% lol
… Me too but make it electric to blow the doors off Maseratis from the lights.
One of us!
As someone whose only car is a Honda S2000… yeah kinda.
Do honda s2000s get that bad of gas milage? They’re pretty small, lightweight cars
The engine is pretty high strung so you’re lucky to get 20-24 mpg. If you drive it hard (and it wants to be driven hard) it’s going to be less. That’s still probably better than the kind of huge muscle car in the picture, though.
The other thing is it’s just not a pleasant car to drive in traffic. It’s a manual transmission car (only ever made in manual) and it’s really easy to stall, among other things, so it’s not fun to drive through rush hour.
Ahh, gotcha. Thats a shame, my dream car is a miata which I’ve always wanted to daily drive, and I tend to think of the s2000 similarly since they’re a lot alike in many respects
It’s a shame the MR2 isn’t made anymore.
Miatas are pretty similar, but modern ones have some nice advantages! It’s rated for 25/35 mpg, for example, and unlike a lot of car makers Mazda’s fuel economy numbers are pretty realistic. A Miata isn’t going to be as painful to drive in traffic, either. Not unless you modify it or something.
My dream car is an NA, so a bit less practical lol, but I still desperately want one
Also the clutch doesn’t require much force to engage, and 1st gear seems pretty forgiving, at least on the NDs. I can’t say I enjoy driving in traffic, but it’s not too bad
…i’m surprised to read that; my elise and MX-5s all get around thirty miles per gallon on the street, it’s only on tracks where fuel economy drops precipitously…
The S2k is just in a weird spot due to the engine being so crazy. The 2005 EPA rating was 17/23 for example. It’s a combination of high revving engine (you seriously drive in the 3-5k rev range in normal traffic), short gear ratios, and more weight than either an MX-5 or Elise. The thing is a legend but it’s far from perfect! Or perhaps, it’s a legend because of the imperfections the engineers gave it.
…the elise’s 2ZZ-GE is nearly as highly-strung as the F20 (splits the difference from the F20C at 8500 RPM) but it’s also 10% less displacement, which may make the most difference in fuel economy compared to pushing 40% more weight in the S2000…
…i wish my mazdas revved so high!..
Yeah, it also makes 50 less horsepower (but more torque!) than the s2000 engines and that power has to come from somewhere. Ironically, the cars with the F20C tend to do a little better than the cars with the F22C, probably down to the gear ratios being shorter for the latter cars (in the US at least). That said, the difference in engines is probably not as relevant as the difference in weight. It’s crazy how light the Elise is.
ND Miatas are getting there. The new engine is 180 bhp and revs to 7500 (i think?), combined with its light weight that puts it at a similar performance level to the S2000. Obviously i’m not rushing to trade mine in any time soon but the fact that Mazda is still willing (and able) to make a car like that is really impressive imo.
The groceries in the passenger seat are a nice touch, because of course there’s gonna be no trunk space.
Instead of a macho man forging their destiny, it is a woman, given that it is the 70s, likely a housewife, coming home from grocery shopping.
How do you know she’s not a macho man forging his destiny as a housewife?
Because it is the 70s, and I am going with the common themes of the time
And doing groceries or work-related is why most people drive.
I love the groceries in the front seat because there’s no room anywhere else.
Even though some sort of trunk or storage could totally fit without increasing the vehicle volume.
How I felt last week in my busted up 350k miles shitbox when there was a Lamborghini and Ferrari beside me crawling through traffic. Even once we were out of gridlock their average speed was probably the exact same as mine. My car costs probably 500 dollars and there’s cost literally a 1000 times more than that. Made me feel good. Also made me feel like ramming them just because
As it turns out, road speed is limited by laws, safety and traffic, not the HP of your car engine.
Which perhaps makes the purchase more justifiable in Germany when you live within reach of the Autobahn…
At least in my state, traffic tends to be the only inhibitor
That’s what I tell people. The reality of driving sucks. You might be in love with your fantasy of a 500 HP beast, but
meanwhile on an open mountain road on a Sunday afternoon
“Woooooo!!!”
Where you’re driving is as important as what. You’d love to drive a Civic Type R.
In a hospital? Maybe not.
The fact that it needs to be open means 99% of people can’t be there, which includes 98% of 500 HP car owners.
99% of people aren’t there, it’s a sunny afternoon on a mountain road.
You’re missing the point. 98% of drivers drive cars they don’t need and never experience fully. If driving on an open road on a sunny Sunday afternoon was the average motivation for such a car they’d all be stuck in traffic.
It’s the same argument behind pickups, really.
Nah, FL5 Type 5 has hill assist, rev match, anti stall, and brake lock. With really comfy bucket seats. At speed you got Honda’s bitchin adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist. It’s as comfortable as a manual car can be for commuting and traffic. 10/10 would recommend as daily driver.
1969 and it is still relevant.
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Something tells me you drink and drive
Not at all. They are assholes.
You’ve invented such an angry fact about me 😑.
Most people live in a city, and are therefore subject to traffic like this.
Wrong. Individually Urban neighborhoods were about 100M. See what you have done is combined urban and suburban populations like it’s a political map. But the suburban population of the US is 175M with rural adding 46M.
So no, most of the US, does not experience this nor do they live in a city. They probably live near a city.
Suburbs are a part of a city.
Look even expanding your scope here, only 40% of them live in early suburbs vs late and exurb. And only the early suburbs from the top 6 metropolis. The vast majority of small metropolis early suburbs look nothing like this.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/us-cities-factsheet
It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-majority-of-people-in-the-world-now-live-in-cities
cities with more than 50,000 people have become the most popular living areas worldwide, as shown in the chart.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270860/urbanization-by-continent/
North America as well as Latin America and the Caribbean were the regions with the highest level of urbanization, with over four fifths of the population residing in urban areas.
Looking at counties instead of actual cities is your problem.
Exactly, the comic is showing an urban driver’s problem. Fortunately the USA is massive and we have many more uncrowded roads across its vast and beautiful landscape that drivers can travel freely upon. Traffic jams are rare in my area, but occasionally I visit Atlanta or some similarly large city and marvel at how much it sucks to drive in their traffic.
True freedom includes having room to breathe and roam. For those who haven’t experienced it, my condolences.
Murica
The slowest common denominator decides how much man you are heh
lol front car is Trauma B
I’ve always wanted to do this in video form - have a montage of heroic car ads that just crossfade together with tons of shots of those gas guzzlers sitting at red lights and in traffic.
Please do, curious to see what it’d result in.
