11 ms·

Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? First it was stretch limos, then Hummers, th

by carlob 14y ago

Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? First it was stretch limos, then Hummers, then Hummer stretch limos. I wonder if we're gonna see stretch limo fire trucks… Edit (since I'm being downvoted): The story is cool, I just find the fact that he's driving it daily to work completely retarded. What the hell I consider driving a car to work to be hardly justifiable at all in our trade, but a 31 year old fire truck is sending a giant fuck you to anyone else trying to reduce their carbon emissions.

petepete 14y ago
There is a (non-stretched) Fire Engine Limousine in my hometown, I don't know which company it belongs to but I've seen it a few times in central Manchester. Looks like this: http://www.needalimo.com/our-cars/novelty-limos/fire-engine-limos/index.htm http://www.needalimo.com/our-cars/novelty-limos/fire-engine-...
jeffdavis 14y ago
If someone wrote about their experiences travelling the world, would you make a similar criticism? After all, they are flying, which causes a lot of extra carbon emissions. Or is the fire truck particularly bad for some reason?
- Swizec 14y ago
  As a European I don't understand the american fascination with impractically fhuge cars for every day commuting. Okay I get it, you want a big car for that roadtrip or vacation. Understandable, I do too. But for everyday stuff? My hatchback does perfectly fine around town ... hell, it does perfectly well on most vacations and long drives too.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    There's no complicated fascination. It is simple. People like big cars because they are spacious, feel safer, provide a higher vantage point, and a host of other reasons. Your hatchback is perfectly fine around town, but it can't tow a boat, and most people don't like to have multiple cars. So, what winds up happening is people buy the most car they think they will need. It's totally overkill driving to work, and plenty of people never actually tow that boat, but this is why it happens. Europeans would do the exact same thing, I figure, if they lived in an economic climate with similar gas prices and car taxes and such. With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small.
    - byroot 14y ago
      > With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small. It's more the rule than the exception. European car makers have a specific car category named "City cars", big enough to host 4 to 5 people but as small as possible to be easy to park etc. Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is why he don't understand. American cities are modern and built for cars, most big european cities have been built for walkers and horses, so now we got a tons of oneway streets and a general lack of space to park cars.
      - justincormack 14y ago
        Or the smaller ones for 2 people...
      - chaz 14y ago
        Combine that with a fairly sophisticated highway system that runs everywhere around the country, a post-war boom in car and suburban home ownership, and low cost of fuel, and it becomes imbued within the culture as the norm.
      - Swizec 14y ago
        > Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is a very important distinction! What a European considers a huge SUV is a small town car in the US. At least judging from what I've seen on my visits. Some of those cars are just uncomfortably big.
      - zanny 14y ago
        It kind of depends where you live in the US. I live in a rural PA town where they have built highways over dirt roads and the main state route into town is a two lane country street that carries 18 wheelers every hour of the day and has a never ending backup. Parking on main street, for example, is nigh impossible. Parts of it aren't wide enough for many cars to go past one another while the streetside parking is in use (and it always is, the town has no parking since... who needed parking in 1800?). And then there is a big state university in town, so you end up getting delivery trucks to the campus all the time and some drivers don't have the experience to know not to try taking an 18 wheeler down main street.
  - sharkweek 14y ago
    I've got a Toyota 4Runner, perfectly capable of moving people and towing a trailer on rare occasions. It also comes in really handy when we do our Costco grocery shopping. For the "everyday" commute, I'm proudly on the bus and noticing as of late that this is getting more and more common with younger age groups who want to live in urban areas, where mass transit is most convenient. I would bet this trend continues for the next few decades in the United States.
    - BruceIV 14y ago
      Agreed. I do most of my commuting by bus, and mostly drive my car nights and weekends, when the bus doesn't run as often, or my few trips out of town - most months I only fill up once. That said, I wouldn't get rid of my car: I live in one of about 15 cities in Canada large enough to have a decent bus system [1, >300,000 people], and when I make the 15 hour drive a quarter of the way across the country to visit my family, I need the car to get around, because they live 10 kilometres from the nearest town large enough to have a supermarket. Public transit is awesome, but most of my country simply doesn't have the population density to support it (the distances and travel times are similar in the US, though there are more cities, so I understand the car culture) [1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/d...
  - alan_cx 14y ago
    Im a European, well British anyway.... Something occurred to me today regarding Americans and big huge stupid cars... I was watching the NASCAR earlier and there was a throwaway comment about some driver's sponsors being "local". By local they mean 60 miles away. Now to a Brit, maybe other Europeans, 60 miles feels like anything but "local". So, I get the impression that we don't understand the sort of scale of travel there is in the US. Which kinda begins to explain this fascination with big large cars with big lazy engines. These cars fit American geography and scale. I think it also explain what oil seems that bit more important to the Americans. See, Im pretty sure that if an American came to live in the UK (maybe else where in Europe) and tried to run a big old American car here, it would take about a week before this American when off and bought a little European type car. Equally, Im pretty sure we'd ditch a small Euro type car for a big old American thing is we went to the US. I too think American cars are a bit silly, but I think they make sense in context. I think American cars will get smaller and more efficient, but I think they will always be designed with those long distances and scales in mind.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      "A Brit is someone who thinks 100 miles in a long distance, and an American is someone who thinks 100 years is a long time."
    - courtewing 14y ago
      To give you some sense of how "local" 60 miles can be in the US, I live a more urban life style than most people in the US (although likely less than most people on this board), but I frequently drive 60 miles simply to have dinner with friends or family. We never considered that a hike, it's just a quick trip in the car. Our 2005 Honda CRV is approaching 120,000 miles, and both myself and my fiancée telecommute.
      - arethuza 14y ago
        I'm in the UK (Scotland) and I don't think twice about driving 6 hours in one day to go skiing (3 hour drive, say 6 hours skiing, 3 hour drive back) - in fact thinking about doing that tomorrow. A colleage just drove/ferry back home from Germany - which nobody regards as anything unusual.
  - goatforce5 14y ago
    Apparently the fascination is ending: "According to Polk's data, the large mainstream sedan segment has plunged from a 5.8-percent share of the US car market in 2008 to just 3.5 percent in 2012. That sales drop is enough to put this most American of car bodystyles behind the minivan segment, a market whose own sales slide has been comparatively well documented." http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-withering-away-will-it-survive/ http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-witherin...
  - jetti 14y ago
    I currently drive a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup and love it. Do I have a need for it all the time? No. But there were a few factors that went into the decision: - My wife wants to get a boat as well as we were gifted jet skis by her family. - I anticipate moving at least three times over the next 10 years (the lifetime I give to the car barring any accidents) which the pickup will be great to be able to move things as well as being able to hookup a UHaul and go. The biggest plus for me though is that I'm 6' 3" and 250lb and don't necessarily fit into some of the cars that are economical when it comes to fuel. My previous car (Toyota Corolla) actually would hurt my knees when driving more than 30 minutes because I had to angle my legs in a weird position in order to drive.
  - brc 14y ago
    Cut the guy some slack, he lives in Montana. Space and distances are hardly a rare commodity in Montana. It's OK for other people to have a bit of fun. Really, it is.
- fzzzy 14y ago
  This is one thing that bugs me about complaints about the carbon emissions of cars. Planes cause far more carbon emissions, and they do it way up in the atmosphere where it seems plausible that it actually does more damage. It's a giant elephant in the room.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    You can take steps to reduce carbon emissions in cars (smaller car, drive more efficiently, etc), but you can't with planes other than not flying. Luckily, it's in the best interest of airlines to reduce emissions since that means less jet fuel and more profits.
    - fzzzy 14y ago
      Indeed, this is true. Thanks for this. The realization that it is also in the best interest of an airline to reduce emissions, especially as the price of oil increases, really helps make me feel better. Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it.
      - Peaker 14y ago
        Of course it does reduce emissions. Increasing demand for flights means the airlines fly more planes.
      - zevyoura 14y ago
        >Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it. On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights.
        claudius 14y ago
        > On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights. Try to get flights from London to Paris or from Paris to Lyon. Not flying stops planes from flying very quickly.
druiid 14y ago
Dude, it is a single firetruck, not a fleet of firetrucks being driven around to pick up groceries. If he were starting a trend, then yes perhaps this would be a-bad-thing. Instead, it's one guy fulfilling a lifelong dream. The gas mileage is going to be terrible and the emissions bad, but it's one firetruck.
- carlob 14y ago
  Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
  - baddox 14y ago
    The maxim is simply "if you're really interested in fire trucks, and you can afford one, then you can buy one," and there's no problem with it becoming a "universal law," because very few people will be that interested in fire trucks.
    - mjhoy 14y ago
      Also, if everyone were to try to buy firetrucks, the price goes up — and makes me wonder how supply and demand fits in with the categorical imperative (if at all).
  - mhartl 14y ago
    Kant was wrong.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Do you want to live in a world where I get to decide if your lifestyle will scale to seven billion people? Because I'm thinking your computer would use less electricity and cause less CO2 pollution if it were half as fast as it is.
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
>Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Well, yeah. Seriously though, I didn't get the impression that he drives it every day, and the town that he lives in is tiny. I doubt anyone would. I don't know if he mentions it but I'd estimate the bounds for his fuel mileage to be 4 mpg to 10 mpg. >What the hell I consider driving a car to work to be hardly justifiable at all in our trade If you lived in Missoula Montana, I doubt you'd consider a car / truck as optional.
pizza 14y ago
> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? No, this is just one person, don't think it's representative of Americans.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nettdata 14y ago
Whatever you do, don't Google "Unimog".
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
  Oh, Gods, why did you have to say that ;-) I have fkn loved Unimogs for years. To make matters worse, I live near a dealer. Lucky for me I can't afford a new one and even the used ones command a pretty penny.
  - radnor 14y ago
    How about buying a LEGO Unimog for $200? :) http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mercedes-Benz-Unimog-U-400-8110 http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mercedes-Benz-Unimog-U-400-8110
tmoertel 14y ago
> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Not at all. It’s just that in the USA, things are on a different scale, and it makes sense to have larger vehicles. For example, a couple of years ago on eBay I bought a second-hand carrier battle group. Now, if you’re not from the USA, I can already hear you objecting that “it’s impractical” to drive a small fleet of ocean-going vessels on suburban streets, or that “it’s wasteful” to retain a staff of thousands just to make the daily commute, or that it’s “not all that great, environment-wise,” to knock over city blocks every time I make a Starbucks run. And, in your country, I’d guess you’d have a point. But here in the USA, once you factor the need to carry back all the stuff we buy at Costco, you can see how the extra capacity of a carrier battle group would actually save you trips and, in the long run, be more efficient than a smaller vehicle. So, once you think it through, it actually makes sense. It’s all a matter of scale.
- uogecko 14y ago
  This made me laugh out loud - thank you!
- webnrrd2k 14y ago
  I thought I was bad driving my farming combine to work and back. I feel so much better now.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
  I had a similar experience buying a MiG-17 as my primary vehicle to commute to work 17 miles away. The DMV was initially not happy about my taking off and landing on quiet highways, but luckily they became more understanding after many letters. How much did you end up paying for your CVBG?
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    Guys, I understand wanting to maximize your load-carrying efficiency, but decommissioned naval vessels and military aircraft are not the way to do it. For my commute, I chose rail instead – Budd Pioneer III-series rolling stock go for surprisingly little on eBay these days, and at least where I live, it's not terribly expensive to file the paperwork for a zoning easement to add a 700v third rail to a local stretch of freight rail (you can usually find qualified installers on Craigslist). These rolling stock are single-operator capable, so the staffing costs can be quite low, and generally buying electric for a home rapid transit system is far cheaper than buying fuel for a home naval vessel or home fighter jet, especially if you can power down the transformers while you're at work.
TrevorJ 14y ago
The other side of this is that the energy and pollution cost of creating a new car are very significant. You'd have to extend the life of the gas guzzler for quite a while before there's a net increase in pollution vs. a new vehicle.
jchrisa 14y ago
I sold my car and got the Humvee of bikes, it can carry two loads of firewood, or two kids, or a kid and the plants we got at the garden store. Most of America is batshit crazy but in Portland, Oregon the no-car lifestyle is catching on. Hopefully other cities too. Bike photo! https://mobile.twitter.com/jchris/status/312728928919896064 https://mobile.twitter.com/jchris/status/312728928919896064
- ljf 14y ago
  Awesome bike mate! I'd love one of those but I currently get by with a racer for work and panniered up road bike for shopping but that bike is the bomb! Some couriers use them in London, if I had somewhere to store one I'd buy in a shot! Enjoy!
  - robin_reala 14y ago
    Somewhat smaller but probably the same level of practicality: http://donkybike.com/specs/ http://donkybike.com/specs/
- ako 14y ago
  SUB - Sports utility bike: https://twitter.com/andrkoel/status/208851605599174656/photo/1 https://twitter.com/andrkoel/status/208851605599174656/photo... I've actually driven this bike with complete windsurf and kitesurf set in the trunk.
- akinder 14y ago
  > Most of America is batshit crazy but in Portland, Oregon... You're joking right? Portland was nauseating. Filled to the brim with smug hipsters who apparently share your sentiment: that the rest of us are insane for having a car to travel to work/home/vacations etc.
nakedrobot2 14y ago
Yes. :-)
wheatley 14y ago
Depends on how far it is to his work, I mean the thing is a novelty. And reducing carbon emissions isn't the point of it. It's about him following his dream of something he's loved all of his life.

by carlob 14y ago

petepete 14y ago

There is a (non-stretched) Fire Engine Limousine in my hometown, I don't know which company it belongs to but I've seen it a few times in central Manchester. Looks like this: http://www.needalimo.com/our-cars/novelty-limos/fire-engine-limos/index.htm http://www.needalimo.com/our-cars/novelty-limos/fire-engine-...

jeffdavis 14y ago

If someone wrote about their experiences travelling the world, would you make a similar criticism? After all, they are flying, which causes a lot of extra carbon emissions. Or is the fire truck particularly bad for some reason?

Swizec 14y ago
As a European I don't understand the american fascination with impractically fhuge cars for every day commuting. Okay I get it, you want a big car for that roadtrip or vacation. Understandable, I do too. But for everyday stuff? My hatchback does perfectly fine around town ... hell, it does perfectly well on most vacations and long drives too.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  There's no complicated fascination. It is simple. People like big cars because they are spacious, feel safer, provide a higher vantage point, and a host of other reasons. Your hatchback is perfectly fine around town, but it can't tow a boat, and most people don't like to have multiple cars. So, what winds up happening is people buy the most car they think they will need. It's totally overkill driving to work, and plenty of people never actually tow that boat, but this is why it happens. Europeans would do the exact same thing, I figure, if they lived in an economic climate with similar gas prices and car taxes and such. With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small.
  - byroot 14y ago
    > With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small. It's more the rule than the exception. European car makers have a specific car category named "City cars", big enough to host 4 to 5 people but as small as possible to be easy to park etc. Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is why he don't understand. American cities are modern and built for cars, most big european cities have been built for walkers and horses, so now we got a tons of oneway streets and a general lack of space to park cars.
    - justincormack 14y ago
      Or the smaller ones for 2 people...
    - chaz 14y ago
      Combine that with a fairly sophisticated highway system that runs everywhere around the country, a post-war boom in car and suburban home ownership, and low cost of fuel, and it becomes imbued within the culture as the norm.
    - Swizec 14y ago
      > Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is a very important distinction! What a European considers a huge SUV is a small town car in the US. At least judging from what I've seen on my visits. Some of those cars are just uncomfortably big.
    - zanny 14y ago
      It kind of depends where you live in the US. I live in a rural PA town where they have built highways over dirt roads and the main state route into town is a two lane country street that carries 18 wheelers every hour of the day and has a never ending backup. Parking on main street, for example, is nigh impossible. Parts of it aren't wide enough for many cars to go past one another while the streetside parking is in use (and it always is, the town has no parking since... who needed parking in 1800?). And then there is a big state university in town, so you end up getting delivery trucks to the campus all the time and some drivers don't have the experience to know not to try taking an 18 wheeler down main street.
- sharkweek 14y ago
  I've got a Toyota 4Runner, perfectly capable of moving people and towing a trailer on rare occasions. It also comes in really handy when we do our Costco grocery shopping. For the "everyday" commute, I'm proudly on the bus and noticing as of late that this is getting more and more common with younger age groups who want to live in urban areas, where mass transit is most convenient. I would bet this trend continues for the next few decades in the United States.
  - BruceIV 14y ago
    Agreed. I do most of my commuting by bus, and mostly drive my car nights and weekends, when the bus doesn't run as often, or my few trips out of town - most months I only fill up once. That said, I wouldn't get rid of my car: I live in one of about 15 cities in Canada large enough to have a decent bus system [1, >300,000 people], and when I make the 15 hour drive a quarter of the way across the country to visit my family, I need the car to get around, because they live 10 kilometres from the nearest town large enough to have a supermarket. Public transit is awesome, but most of my country simply doesn't have the population density to support it (the distances and travel times are similar in the US, though there are more cities, so I understand the car culture) [1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/d...
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Im a European, well British anyway.... Something occurred to me today regarding Americans and big huge stupid cars... I was watching the NASCAR earlier and there was a throwaway comment about some driver's sponsors being "local". By local they mean 60 miles away. Now to a Brit, maybe other Europeans, 60 miles feels like anything but "local". So, I get the impression that we don't understand the sort of scale of travel there is in the US. Which kinda begins to explain this fascination with big large cars with big lazy engines. These cars fit American geography and scale. I think it also explain what oil seems that bit more important to the Americans. See, Im pretty sure that if an American came to live in the UK (maybe else where in Europe) and tried to run a big old American car here, it would take about a week before this American when off and bought a little European type car. Equally, Im pretty sure we'd ditch a small Euro type car for a big old American thing is we went to the US. I too think American cars are a bit silly, but I think they make sense in context. I think American cars will get smaller and more efficient, but I think they will always be designed with those long distances and scales in mind.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    "A Brit is someone who thinks 100 miles in a long distance, and an American is someone who thinks 100 years is a long time."
  - courtewing 14y ago
    To give you some sense of how "local" 60 miles can be in the US, I live a more urban life style than most people in the US (although likely less than most people on this board), but I frequently drive 60 miles simply to have dinner with friends or family. We never considered that a hike, it's just a quick trip in the car. Our 2005 Honda CRV is approaching 120,000 miles, and both myself and my fiancée telecommute.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      I'm in the UK (Scotland) and I don't think twice about driving 6 hours in one day to go skiing (3 hour drive, say 6 hours skiing, 3 hour drive back) - in fact thinking about doing that tomorrow. A colleage just drove/ferry back home from Germany - which nobody regards as anything unusual.
- goatforce5 14y ago
  Apparently the fascination is ending: "According to Polk's data, the large mainstream sedan segment has plunged from a 5.8-percent share of the US car market in 2008 to just 3.5 percent in 2012. That sales drop is enough to put this most American of car bodystyles behind the minivan segment, a market whose own sales slide has been comparatively well documented." http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-withering-away-will-it-survive/ http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-witherin...
- jetti 14y ago
  I currently drive a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup and love it. Do I have a need for it all the time? No. But there were a few factors that went into the decision: - My wife wants to get a boat as well as we were gifted jet skis by her family. - I anticipate moving at least three times over the next 10 years (the lifetime I give to the car barring any accidents) which the pickup will be great to be able to move things as well as being able to hookup a UHaul and go. The biggest plus for me though is that I'm 6' 3" and 250lb and don't necessarily fit into some of the cars that are economical when it comes to fuel. My previous car (Toyota Corolla) actually would hurt my knees when driving more than 30 minutes because I had to angle my legs in a weird position in order to drive.
- brc 14y ago
  Cut the guy some slack, he lives in Montana. Space and distances are hardly a rare commodity in Montana. It's OK for other people to have a bit of fun. Really, it is.
fzzzy 14y ago
This is one thing that bugs me about complaints about the carbon emissions of cars. Planes cause far more carbon emissions, and they do it way up in the atmosphere where it seems plausible that it actually does more damage. It's a giant elephant in the room.
- jonknee 14y ago
  You can take steps to reduce carbon emissions in cars (smaller car, drive more efficiently, etc), but you can't with planes other than not flying. Luckily, it's in the best interest of airlines to reduce emissions since that means less jet fuel and more profits.
  - fzzzy 14y ago
    Indeed, this is true. Thanks for this. The realization that it is also in the best interest of an airline to reduce emissions, especially as the price of oil increases, really helps make me feel better. Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it.
    - Peaker 14y ago
      Of course it does reduce emissions. Increasing demand for flights means the airlines fly more planes.
    - zevyoura 14y ago
      >Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it. On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights.
      - claudius 14y ago
        > On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights. Try to get flights from London to Paris or from Paris to Lyon. Not flying stops planes from flying very quickly.

druiid 14y ago

Dude, it is a single firetruck, not a fleet of firetrucks being driven around to pick up groceries. If he were starting a trend, then yes perhaps this would be a-bad-thing. Instead, it's one guy fulfilling a lifelong dream. The gas mileage is going to be terrible and the emissions bad, but it's one firetruck.

carlob 14y ago
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
- baddox 14y ago
  The maxim is simply "if you're really interested in fire trucks, and you can afford one, then you can buy one," and there's no problem with it becoming a "universal law," because very few people will be that interested in fire trucks.
  - mjhoy 14y ago
    Also, if everyone were to try to buy firetrucks, the price goes up — and makes me wonder how supply and demand fits in with the categorical imperative (if at all).
- mhartl 14y ago
  Kant was wrong.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Do you want to live in a world where I get to decide if your lifestyle will scale to seven billion people? Because I'm thinking your computer would use less electricity and cause less CO2 pollution if it were half as fast as it is.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

>Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Well, yeah. Seriously though, I didn't get the impression that he drives it every day, and the town that he lives in is tiny. I doubt anyone would. I don't know if he mentions it but I'd estimate the bounds for his fuel mileage to be 4 mpg to 10 mpg. >What the hell I consider driving a car to work to be hardly justifiable at all in our trade If you lived in Missoula Montana, I doubt you'd consider a car / truck as optional.

pizza 14y ago

> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? No, this is just one person, don't think it's representative of Americans.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

nettdata 14y ago

Whatever you do, don't Google "Unimog".

HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
Oh, Gods, why did you have to say that ;-) I have fkn loved Unimogs for years. To make matters worse, I live near a dealer. Lucky for me I can't afford a new one and even the used ones command a pretty penny.
- radnor 14y ago
  How about buying a LEGO Unimog for $200? :) http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mercedes-Benz-Unimog-U-400-8110 http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Mercedes-Benz-Unimog-U-400-8110

tmoertel 14y ago

> Is there some sort of crazy game of one-upmanship in the USA as to who can drive the most impractical gas guzzler? Not at all. It’s just that in the USA, things are on a different scale, and it makes sense to have larger vehicles. For example, a couple of years ago on eBay I bought a second-hand carrier battle group. Now, if you’re not from the USA, I can already hear you objecting that “it’s impractical” to drive a small fleet of ocean-going vessels on suburban streets, or that “it’s wasteful” to retain a staff of thousands just to make the daily commute, or that it’s “not all that great, environment-wise,” to knock over city blocks every time I make a Starbucks run. And, in your country, I’d guess you’d have a point. But here in the USA, once you factor the need to carry back all the stuff we buy at Costco, you can see how the extra capacity of a carrier battle group would actually save you trips and, in the long run, be more efficient than a smaller vehicle. So, once you think it through, it actually makes sense. It’s all a matter of scale.

uogecko 14y ago
This made me laugh out loud - thank you!
webnrrd2k 14y ago
I thought I was bad driving my farming combine to work and back. I feel so much better now.
deleted 14y ago
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THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
I had a similar experience buying a MiG-17 as my primary vehicle to commute to work 17 miles away. The DMV was initially not happy about my taking off and landing on quiet highways, but luckily they became more understanding after many letters. How much did you end up paying for your CVBG?
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  Guys, I understand wanting to maximize your load-carrying efficiency, but decommissioned naval vessels and military aircraft are not the way to do it. For my commute, I chose rail instead – Budd Pioneer III-series rolling stock go for surprisingly little on eBay these days, and at least where I live, it's not terribly expensive to file the paperwork for a zoning easement to add a 700v third rail to a local stretch of freight rail (you can usually find qualified installers on Craigslist). These rolling stock are single-operator capable, so the staffing costs can be quite low, and generally buying electric for a home rapid transit system is far cheaper than buying fuel for a home naval vessel or home fighter jet, especially if you can power down the transformers while you're at work.

TrevorJ 14y ago

The other side of this is that the energy and pollution cost of creating a new car are very significant. You'd have to extend the life of the gas guzzler for quite a while before there's a net increase in pollution vs. a new vehicle.

jchrisa 14y ago

I sold my car and got the Humvee of bikes, it can carry two loads of firewood, or two kids, or a kid and the plants we got at the garden store. Most of America is batshit crazy but in Portland, Oregon the no-car lifestyle is catching on. Hopefully other cities too. Bike photo! https://mobile.twitter.com/jchris/status/312728928919896064 https://mobile.twitter.com/jchris/status/312728928919896064

ljf 14y ago
Awesome bike mate! I'd love one of those but I currently get by with a racer for work and panniered up road bike for shopping but that bike is the bomb! Some couriers use them in London, if I had somewhere to store one I'd buy in a shot! Enjoy!
- robin_reala 14y ago
  Somewhat smaller but probably the same level of practicality: http://donkybike.com/specs/ http://donkybike.com/specs/
ako 14y ago
SUB - Sports utility bike: https://twitter.com/andrkoel/status/208851605599174656/photo/1 https://twitter.com/andrkoel/status/208851605599174656/photo... I've actually driven this bike with complete windsurf and kitesurf set in the trunk.
akinder 14y ago
> Most of America is batshit crazy but in Portland, Oregon... You're joking right? Portland was nauseating. Filled to the brim with smug hipsters who apparently share your sentiment: that the rest of us are insane for having a car to travel to work/home/vacations etc.

nakedrobot2 14y ago

Yes. :-)

wheatley 14y ago

Depends on how far it is to his work, I mean the thing is a novelty. And reducing carbon emissions isn't the point of it. It's about him following his dream of something he's loved all of his life.