Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for September 25, 2009

I want one of those cars. But they cost too much. And the’re ugly.

Not if they keep going to the library. How would you get to work?

The Smart car is cute, but it’s not that great for all the hype. It is now up to a 1 liter engine and takes premium gas. A motorcycle gets better gas mileage on regular or plus gas and also carries 2. As a biker I’d rather see more motorcycles like in Europe. Companies have been building fuel economy cars since at least the 20’s. My 2nd car back in the 70’s was an Austin Healy Sprite with a 948cc engine and was fun to drive with great gas mileage and even the Mother Earth News had a series of articles by a guy on how to make your own Hybrid car in the late 70’s or early 80’s, and another set of articles on how to make an enclosed motorcycle with outrigger wheels.

There once was a young man from Boston, Who drove around town in an Austin. He had room for his a–, And a gallon of gas, But his b—s hung out and he lost ‘em.

Some guys drive cars that keep pulling toward bars.

I have a1999 Metro with 160000 miles and still get around 40mpg.

@bmwk12ltc – Sadly the single engine available in the US has been “tuned” to US emissions standards, giving it half the economy of the smarts available elsewhere in the free world.

My 2006 CDI (diesel) gets nearly 60 mpg in mixed driving, around 70 mpg on the open road.

Strangely, the diesel engine used in the smart has the lowest emissions of any engine on the market, but is not offered in the US as market studies done by SmartUSA said that Americans wouldn’t buy them. Oddly, yet again, is that smartusa is a seperate entity from Daimler-Benz, who markets the cars in the rest of the world, meaning you could get them serviced by a mercedes dealer. Don’t you love Capitalism?

I don’t fit inside “smart” cars. They are too bleeep small.

johnnydoc5: Are you from Detroit? I was born a Detroiter, but left many years ago.

I’ll buy one when it can either haul my family and pull my travel trailer or cost less than a $1000.00.