Question of the Day: Car of the Decade?
The New York Times Wheels blog has a post up today about how the Porsche Cayenne might be the car of the decade. Author Christian Edstrom argues that the fugly off-roader dumped buckets of duckets into Porsche's coffers, saving the independent automaker from takeover. Moreover, ignoring CAFE-type reasons and sordid family history, Edstrom perpetuates the party line: Porsche bought VW to maintain a steady flow of parts for their SUV cash cow. Nice theory, but car of the decade? I don't think so. To my mind, the car of the Oughts (Naughts?) is the Subaru WRX. Hear me out. The WRX is the democratization of performance. For just $25k, the Subie could run with Porsches (and on certain roads, outrun them) and haul the kids. Moreover, everyone paid attention. Sure, M and AMG predate the Rex, but those are rich people toys. Nowadays? EVO, Redline, GXP, Volkswagen's R, MazdaSpeed, SS, SRT not only exist, but are more than just superfluous badging (typically meaning AWD, turbocharging or sometimes both) thanks to the Rex. Besides, as much as I like the (turbocharged) Cayenne, I just ain't buying it. Even if I could. You?
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The previous generation V8 BMW M5. Required riding. 2000 to 2003 in the USA. 14 mpg on a good day. 10 when you're pissed off and taking it out on the car. Sounds a helluva lot better than the new M3... burbling from idle to full redline shout. The Prius? Come on! Is this TTAC or Condemner Retorts? The Prius is not a car for enthusiast drivers... it's an appliance to assuage lefty-liberal guilt. And I think those who voted for it are massaging their guilty egos for not buying one. One can only hope they have worthy sins... like harbouring gas-swilling orgasmatron 6.0 LS2 GTO's in their garages... to atone for.
Got to be the EV1 for a couple of reasons. 1. Gm made this when there was no solid reason to go this direction. CA mandated ZEV? Don't sell in CA! Done. 2. Never really was SOLD, just leased then returned and destroyed. 3. When has there been a dedicated following, such as they are , to another single vehicle? Very Grateful Dead like. 4. It hit on a viable solution for where were at right now, waaay before we knew we were going to be here.
EV1 for which decade? It was in production from 1996 to 1999. Production ended before this decade began. IMO they should have just used the EV1 body for the Volt. Already super aerodynamic and had normal size windows to see out. Zoom, Zoom: there are no hard and fast rules to this. But the 2004 Prius is the one with all the success and it is an entirely new model. I don't see how you can disqualify it for being too old. Who says that the car of the Decade must not have had a nameplate that was in use before. It an entirely new model designed from the ground up to be a hybrid, the first for Toyota. The japan only pre-2000 hybrid was essentially a Vitz with a different drive train. If they EV1 nameplate was kept and a new Lithium powered EV1 with 200mile range was introduced in 2003, and it stormed the market, would you disqualify it? Bottom line the 2004 Prius is an all new car, that stormed the market and changed an industry. The reuse of a nameplate doesn't change that.