According to The People Who Always Get It Wrong (the press) the American love affair with the automobile is over. No less authority than The New York Times announced this on Sunday.In a piece entitled Putting The Dream Car Out To Pasture we are subjected to every America/Automobile cliché ever concocted, plus a generous helping of new age socio-babble.
“Beyond the bad economic news may lurk a less remarked shift in Americans’ psyches: a change in the role the automobile occupies in people’s emotional lives and self-image”Give me a fucking break.
The change in consumer automotive behavior is about one thing and one thing only: the price of gas.
It has nothing to do with "psyches", or “guilt over how much damage the exhaust is contributing to the destruction of the planet” or “self-consciousness about the image… a full-size behemoth…conveys today about its driver.”
It’s the price of gas. Period. Exclamation point. End of story.
No one can predict what will happen to the price of oil in the future, but I will confidently predict this. If the price of gas goes back down to 2 bucks a gallon, people will be right back in their big ass cars and trucks.
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