[V8] Hybrids, diesels and other ramblings

[Roger M. Woodbury]

I have found the discussion about hybrids and diesels quite interesting now,
since hybrid this and hybrid that are seen rolling through here with various
out of state plates and some in state plates as well.  This is tourist
season and although there seem fewer of them, I have seen some fairly
interesting cars "from away" once again.
 
Hybrid "technology", as the sales mavens like to tout them, are indeed a fad
and a stop gap measure.  Why any rational person would think two propulsion
systems in something as common as a private passenger automobile makes any
real sense is beyond me.  I am not really current on the subject at this
point, but it would seem to me that the "technology" and added cost of
transportation necessary for the eventual removal, replacement and recycling
of proportionately large battery packs would far outweigh the small fuel
mileage gain of, say, an Explorer hybrid during the useful life, which may
not be much longer than the first lease.
 
I believe that hybrids are nothing more than the deployment of expert
salesmanship and political knee jerking foisted off on a gullible and
increasingly poorly educated population.  The "great 'Merican Way" involves
the image of a BIG car being raced from shopping mall to fast food joint,
all the while guzzling cheap gas. Since the days of cheap gas are gone the
way of cheap credit, it seems that ignorant populace is eager to grasp
anything that will preserve the image and fantasy, fending off the
inevitible decline of its civilization.  Perhaps the real leaders in this
hemisphere may be the Brazilians who don't seem to be worried one whit about
what the Arabs or the Chinese think about oil and the cost of a gallon of
gasoline:  they don't use much.
 
My daughter is visiting us for the week and for the trip up from southern
Virginia, they rented a new Chevy SUV thing.  No, not a Tahoe size but the
one down from that.  It's the first time that I have been up close and
personal with one and I'll pass on my impressions of this thing here for
what they are worth, which isn't much.
 
This thing from the rear is one of the ugliest automobiles I have ever seen.
Whoever designed the ass end on this should have taken lessons from that
Bangle guy who used to be at BMW, because although he designed really ugly
BMWs that everyone was glad to see go away very fast, at least  the ugle
buns on his monstrosities had some sense of style. 
 
The rest of this equinox is just plain ugly, typical of SUV/crossover type
vehicles.  It doesn't seem to matter what sort of paint, or how many glitzy
polycarbonate headlight lenses they hang on thse boxes, they all end up just
sort of ugly.  At the end of the day, a box is a box is a box.
 
This one particular example is not a hybrid.  The only significant comment
that my daughter or her significant other has made is that it simply doesn't
fit his 5' 11" frame which carries around 270 pounds around.  My daughter
fits just fine, of course.  The thing has three seats which means that any
room for luggage is quite limited.  Between the third seat and the tailgate
of this rather tall and bulbously large car/thing there isn't a whole lot of
room. They are carrying some camping gear in addition to the normal stuff.
There are five in the group, three of whom are young girls below the age of
fourteen, and the way they were travelling was with the adults in the front
and the three girls in the way back seat, the middle seats folded down.  It
didn't appear that the middle seats folded really flat either.  
 
Fuel mileage on the nearly 1,000 mile trip?  Well, it seems as though they
don't really know because they didn't record one fuel stop properly. But the
guestimate is somewhere in the low twenties.  
 
Sooooo, the bottom line is the this sort of vehicle will cost something over
thirty grand, and for that, you get a whole lot of electronic boxes talking
to each other, great big wheels and tires that will cost a huge amount to
replace, and fuel mileage that will further sap the average buyers household
budget with every mile driven.  I find it very interesting that my friend's
1998 Cevy Suburban XL on a trip of any length will get around 15 miles per
gallon, staying relatively close to speed limits and with careful use of
cruise control.  It is a much bigger vehicle than this Equinox that my
daughter has, and has far fewer electronic gizzies to fail at the fourth
aniversary of manufacture.  The headlights aren't terribly glitzy either.
The bottom line seems to be that this Equinox delivers not much for more
than three times the cost of a perfectly usable, relatively low miles,
larger box on wheels from the same manufacturer. A sad commentary for
thirteen years of engineering development and design.
I doubt that a set of batteries located somewhere in this pig, would help it
to perform any better, although the sticker price would probably have been
much higher.
 
On another subject, I am putting out feelers to sell my V8.  The car has
been sitting for two months without being driven, and is not now even
registered.  I have thought about putting it back on the road later this
month, but am wondering if I even want to bother.  I need to take the car up
to the body guy to have the nose fixed after I kissed the snow bank with it
last February, but realistically, I will not be driving the car much from
now until the end of the year as my daily activities involve working on this
old house of ours, and for that either the truck or my wife's Avant is the
vehicle of choice.  It seems that once again my V8 has no real mission and I
am seriously thinking that now is a good time for us to go back to two
vehicles.
 
So there it is.  The majority of the hard stuff has already been done, and
recently.  I have a file of service records, and the things the car needs in
order to be perfect are relatively few....a ding in the trunk lid caused by
an overzealous Chevy pickup tailgate in May, and the front bumper issue of
last February....two wheel caps on the wheels, and a headlight switch are
almost all of it.  If anyone is interested I can shoot some current digital
stills and send them off.  If I can get no interest I will probably just put
the car into the garage for the winter and await next spring.  I am thinking
about something in the four grand range as fair.  I haven't put the feeler
onto the Audi fans website, and have no time to try to do anything more
athletic to sell it than talk a bit, but it might be the right time for this
car to find a new home, both for me and for the car.
 
Roger