Cars Today I am going to talk about cars, which includes SUVs. When I was a kid I remember running out into the street without looking to get my ball. A car screeched to a stop just missing me. The car was from the 1920s and had wooden spoked wheels, was black and had a tar roof. I am an old guy and in those days in the 1940s there were still quite a few of these cars in my neighborhood. One of the reason was everyone who lived there was very poor and even owning a very old car was a step up. As I got older, in my middle teens, all I could think about was getting a car someday. I would look at every car and imagine it was mine and what it would be like to drive it. When I got old enough to work and got my first job with the United States Post Office, I was on the night shift. I had no car and had to take the elevated train to work every night and it really was cold in the winter standing on that platform and waiting for a train which never seemed to be on time. I dreamed about the time when I could drive to work. Owning a car was very special to me and I was not alone. All my friends wanted a car. Most of us finally were able to get used ones, but I got a new one which became a joke. You see, I bought a Volkswagen bug, the payments were just about all I could afford at the time. I look back on that purchase today and laugh about it. I had so much trouble with it, I might have been better off with a used car. I remember when I took it back to the dealer and a mechanic kicked my tire and the headlight fell out. That is a true story. It is not so easy for a new driver to get their first car. Even the used ones are commanding very high prices and the push towards electric cars is expecting people to be able to pay far more for cars. There was a commentator which said something about that push would could be very true. He said the truth about this was the people pushing expensive electric cars know they mostly pollute more than gas ones for years and have dangerous battery packs. The reason for the push is really to force people onto public transportation because they know many people won’t be able to afford to buy an electric vehicle. I have to wonder about the used car market for an electric vehicle. I don’t think I would ever want to buy a used one, especially since I wouldn’t buy a new one. First of all, even if we forget how much the process of building one releases an incredible amount of pollution, far more than a gasoline powered car, and the cars are incredibly heavy and their weight could eventually be a problem for roads and bridges, and their tires are much bigger causing more pollution from them, they are just too inconvenient. I know when I have to fuel up my car there are plenty of gas stations and I don’t have to plan a trip around where the charging stations are. I am amazed at how Elon Musk was able to make a successful company out of Tesla. He didn’t found it, but took it over and made it into a powerful automotive company and did it in an unusual way. In some states you buy a Tesla directly from the factory. Many new electric startups are coming out, but so far some of the new companies can’t seem to get going. I am intrigued by the effort by Porsche to develop a non-polluting fuel for gasoline engines. They have actually done this and are producing small amounts of it. The fuel powers the car just as well as normal gasoline but the price is still too high at around 50 dollars a gallon. They are working on getting the price down. I can’t help but have a hunch even it the price gets competitive, it will either be banned here or hit with high tariffs because it would interfere with the grand plan of forcing electric vehicles on us. I remember when I bought my first full sized car. I thought it was beautiful at the time. It was a 1962 Chevrolet Impala and was new. Cars were different in those days; they weren’t as reliable. When you took a trip you would always see cars broken down on the side of the road and some of them were pretty new. Even my new Chevrolet broke down a couple of times. The cars, even the better models like the Impala would have been considered stripped cars today. It had all the extras at the time which were things like a radio, power steering, automatic transmission and a few other things. Today our cars are rolling computers and most would have made this Impala look wanting. The transmission had a couple of gears and around 50 miles per hour that was it for acceleration which became very slow after that speed. Car dealer’s weren’t very good in those days. If you could get one to fix something in a timely manner you were a lucky person. Once they sold the car to you, they were not interested in repairs under the warranty. I once had a new Ford Mustang and the transmission went out. I brought it to the dealer and they let it sit for months. I kept calling about it and even had to go over there and they kept giving me excuses. Finally, I had to go directly to the Ford company and they finally got the dealer to fix the car. There was another time when I had a Dodge and it needed a repair. I forget what the problem was but it had nothing to do with the car being able to run. The dealer held the car for a month and when I got it back, it still had the same problem. Nobody I knew ever liked going to a car dealer for a repair in those days. It has gotten a lot better today, at least with some of the foreign car makers. When I was young my car was my most prized possession and I always tried to take care of it. Today, I am more concerned about the car being able to run well. I don’t care as much about the brand or anything like that. As a matter of fact, as long as the car runs well, I will keep it even if it gets old.
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