Ökofreaks sollten lieber weghören,, oder wie der Artikelverfasser sagt, besser in ein anderes Land auswandern. Autofans aber sollten diesen Artikel aus dem Wall Street Journal von heute lesen (Hervorhebung von mir):
Sweet 16
From the look of things at the just-ended auto show in Detroit, Arianna Huffington and her band of SUV-bashers may have to find a new country to nag. The headlines trumpeting Cadillac's bid to revive the V-16 engine attest to the American love affair with big, powerful cars.
Maybe that's because big, powerful cars are America. Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, the psychologist who did design work on the PT Cruiser, characterized the many huge engines on display at this year's Michigan catwalk as a "return to pride and power." Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard, describing the reaction to his new Dodge Tomahawk -- a concept motorcycle with a V-10 engine that could top 300 m.p.h. -- said: "Grown men fell to their knees and wept."
But the car that held most drivers rapt was the Cadillac Sixteen. The first V-16 that General Motors has made since 1940, the new Caddy boasts 1,000 horsepower -- quadruple that of most rigs. GM development chief Bob Lutz explained the psychology of it in a recent speech: "The automobile is still the most emotional product on the market today."
If Mr. Lutz ever manages to put his car into production, it is expected to come with a sticker price in the $250,000 range, which means that such cars won't exactly be crowding our roads. And even though efficiency improvements have it getting 20 miles per gallon, don't expect the members of the sackcloth-and-ashes set to change their minds.
It strikes us that the Greenies who are constantly bemoaning our big, powerful cars are often the same people who just don't like America being a big, powerful country.
The point is that our grandiose machines have always been a sign to the rest of the world that the dream works. Even today, the arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in a foreign port causes a turnout. Our bombers are still the terror of the skies. And when foreign airlines want jumbo-sized, they think Boeing.
Ditto our wheels. If anything, the new Sixteen harks back to the start of all the love for the big, in the 1930s, when Caddy's first V-16s became "The Standard of the World." Those glorious sedans were driven by presidents, moguls, movie stars and even gangsters. Every Joe working a night shift dreamed of having one just like it, to show he'd made it too.
We're not against small, if that's what people want. But big can be beautiful too"
(Wall Street Journal Online 1/29)
Oh je, jetzt werden bestimmt gleich wieder die smart-fans sich melden
