Don't Believe Everything You Read.

"I feel like I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe." - Author Unknown

They, whoever "they" are, always say "Never explain the joke."

I'm going to explain the joke. Although "joke" in this case is more along the lines of a splenetic rant.

One of the fundamental problems with American cars is that the auto manufacturers insist on installing speedometers marked as high as 120mph (sometimes higher). This is silly as the very fastest you can legally drive in America is 80mph. I once drove a car with a 140mph speedometer that couldn't have hit 70mph if it had been pushed off the Sears Tower. Another car I drove was mechanically governed to go no faster than 100mph. Three guesses how high that speedometer went.

It's a marketing tool that affects the same irrational parts of our brain that processes religion as they both promise more than they can honestly deliver. Just as religion, mainly the judeo-christian variety, preaches man's dominance over the Earth and, by extension, his manifest destiny to reduce it to ashes, the overly-optimistic speedometer says "You're the King of Speed, baby! Let's wind this puppy out and spew a few more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. Out of the way old people and stray animals! Leadfoot Leo's comin' through!"

Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Fast cars were novel at the beginning of this century, when we were still learning just how fast we can travel on land. But that ear is long gone. We can't all be the new Barney Oldfield, gunning it wide-open towards the beckoning horizon.

We all witnessed what $4 gasoline does to the economy so how about mandating an 80mph limit on speedometers so that people will begin thinking of cars as modes of transportation again and stop treating them as practice hot-rods?

While I'm on the subject let me also remind you all that it takes a minimal amount of horsepower to move a car at highway speeds. Currently, our cars are bought and sold based on their 0-60 performance and that's got to stop. Limiting engine size would go a long way towards keeping this country out of future oil wars.

And they're ALL oil wars.

=mike=