The Best Year Yet to Buy a Car

I saw this article on MSN and thought it would be good to share. Also, the association (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) who put this list together is very interesting.

I remember driving to university years ago and seeing the Honda Insight for the first time. Do you remember that thing? With the half-covered back wheels? It looked like some freak solar powered bike-WAY too granola. But I had one of those "we are living in the future" moments where I realized at some point in my life our world will not move itself around on the backs of the remains of dead dinosaurs. That we will truly start using our heads and maybe get a little closer to the life of George Jetson. Ah Hanna-Barbera. You know what? Maybe that's what Obama should do, fold the department of Energy, Agriculture, Housing and Infrastructure into one and instead of a car Czar, appoint Hanna-Barbera Enterprises, and get them to story board the future and then hire Industrial Light and Magic to build it. Our new modern society will come together within budget, on time, and with trippy colours.

But I digress. I have been driving since I was 18. Ya, like everything in my life, I got a late start. My dad was a rally car driver in his youth so he knew a thing or two behind the wheel. He also felt that 16 is just too young to give the keys to a fast moving piece of metal. So he stalled and stalled and finally (after I had RENEWED my 365-something you only did if you were completely useless behind the wheel and failed multiple driving tests) he let me drive the car to Peterborough on one of his business trips to test some medical equipment. I remember those days tagging along with him lugging his equipment and hanging around empty clinic waiting rooms (you think waiting rooms for your doctor are boring in the middle of the week, try on a Sunday morning-desolate, inconsolable boredom) all for the chance to DRIVE! He taught me for the first few months, and he was pretty good, firm but good. I could tell he was nervous though. I understand the mentallity of the driving school. In most cases the driving school instructor is far better qualified at teaching than your parents, also if you fuck up and drive into a mall it's on their dime. I aced the driving test under my dad's tutelage (we did the driving school thing for a bit just so it would reduce the insurance cost-but it was a waste of time. Learning from someone who drove cars to their limit and had driven in London, Bombay, and Hong Kong...well you get the point). I have been driving pretty much non-stop since. We live in a part of the world truly and madly developed around the idea that "oh you'll just drive there". But the recent real surge in the development of alternative energy power plants for cars and the combination of stretching the internal combustion engine to it's technological limit has mitigated my true Doomer outlook. We really have been slack-ass in the last 20 years. We knew bad shit was going down. I also remember one of my first lectures in Environmental Science about the effects of climate change, and the causes behind it. Those prof's at the time were really plugged in (pardon the pun) and knew what was going down-in 1995!!! So like the magically gifted stoner procrastinating fuck-ups that we are, in 2009 we're starting to get it.

My sister has a Prius. It's pretty bad-ass in it's savingtheworldness. I've heard though that the batteries that are placed near your person in the cabin and can give you ass-cancer. Someone should look into that.

The top car on the list this year is the Civic GX, a car that runs on Natural Gas. 57mpg. Wow. But these are all transitional vehicles. Were kinda living in the era of 8-track when it comes to cars. Vinyl, as cool as it sounds wrecked the Earth, but we're still many years away from the mp3-Or are we-check out The Volt from GM. I believe that GM is going to come back with a VENGEANCE. It's like they are a great talent but also a raging drunk. They have fucked-up beyond all belief. They have been ignoring the advice of friends and family for years, now there has been an intervention from the rich uncle and they are essentially being ordered to follow a 12 step program.

But as you will see on the list given by the ACEEE they are the lone domestic contributers this year to the greenest vehicles, 2 of them being mass-produced and cheap (the Cobalt/G5). Long story short, I wish I was buying a car this year. Lot's of choice that could make you actually feel good about being an unadulterated secret car junkie.

Post Script:

Two things I forgot to mention. One, that it is important to buy new this year if you need a vehicle or have been thinking about one. We need to be spending our way out of this thing, and being an Oshawa, ON boy, this shit we're going through is real for me and my friends, some of whom have already lost their jobs, and many whose family and friends could lose theirs in the days and weeks ahead. Cars have never been cheaper and the financing and the deals that are out their are at levels we won't see again for years.

Also, this is not the time to be getting an old beater. We need to invest in new technology that is climate friendly. This is helps the sky and the folks next door.