KP's opinion on the world

[LekyIRL]

That's why I always watch the first ~10 laps of an F1 race,all the crashes are at the start.

But then,people are sometimes seriously hurt in F1 crashes,whilst it's cool I'm sure it's hell for the people crashing

Moto GP on the other hand,is just funny

[[R-MOD]dunehunter]

The Porsche Cayenne thing has one thing going for it. If you see one, you can be 90% sure that there's going to be a woman driving it.

[Morgan]

British Touring Car Championship is where it's at, that is immense driving. That or Rally.

[H3eadshot]

Group B

[[R-MOD]Dylan]

Oh boy KP. I feel like an ass for laughing so hard. I agree to everything said so far.

[Hardtman]

You have a nice style of writing, keep it up!

I agree with most of what you said (although I don't care much for cars), but I disagree with the scooter, mainly because I own (and will drive as soon as I have my license) one.
Over here the 50 kph makes sense, since the speed limit in all cities and villages is 50.
Besides, it is also built in germany, so it does not only defy the laws of physics but also the laws of stereotypes :P

[Brummy]

Being spoiled is fine, but if you want to show it to be cool, Piss off!

[[R-MOD]KP]

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything, so...

Environmentalists, wake up and smell the kebab!

My dreams have come true. The weather is nice and warm, the birds are singing and, in my free time, I have nothing better to do than lie around in the sun, reading a book, smelling the newly-cut grass and occationally falling asleep. Had my life been a Wilbur Smith book, I'd have ended up with a leathery tanned body and white teeth that made my icy-blue eyes stand out so much more clearly. In reality, however, I'll have forgotten the factor 10, turned over in my sleep, and, as a result, one half of me will be as white as ivory and the other half will look like a boiled prawn. It's a sort of sign that summer's come. In the same way it's not Christmas before the tree has been decorated, it's not summer before I glow like a traffic light on red. When it comes to the business of getting a rapid tan, I am useless.

Some people - environmentalists - will not blame this on my uselessness, though. It'll be blamed on global warming. Just like everything else these days, it seems. The weather has nothing to do with Earth's orbit around the sun and everything to do with people driving cars. When it's getting hot outside - which it did in summer even before the car was invented - it's caused by the planet getting warmer. The winter cold - which also existed before Volvo started making SUVs - is obviously caused by the planet getting warmer as well. As little sense as this makes, it's become an accepted truth and the politically correct thing to say. And - as we have all heard so many times - global warming is caused by cars. It has nothing to do with the dozen or so new coal power-plants popping up every week in China. So we are all to cry ourselves to sleep and take the oh-so environmetally friendly bus.

The bus does have a few minor problems, though. Do you want to go anywhere before 16.30 on a Sunday? Sorry, can't do that. No departures that early. Do you want to get home after a late night on the beer and kebab? You'll have to walk, I'm afraid. Do you want to come home alive? Too bad, because the hatches in a bus' roof seem to be made specifically not to let air in, so you'll die from lack of oxygen. That is, unless the biggest woman in the world has insisted on sitting in the seat next to you - as she will always do - in which case you will have been crushed or eaten before then.

So when you've finally half-stumbled, half-crawled home from town, stopping only to vomit in your neighbour's garden, you'll probably be considering getting a hybrid car. They are, after all, environmentally friendly and very politically correct. And you won't stand out as much as you used to, either. There's a million billion of them out there in the world, especially in the US, where the roads seem to be flowing over with hybrid Toyotas and Lexi.

Well, I'm sorry, but they really aren't all that great. I often park close to a Prius. When I am to describe what it looks like, I would very much like to pull out my inner dictionary and talk about "flowing lines, elegance, futuristic beauty and the proof that form and function can be united, all wrapped up in one family-sized package", but I can't. That would be a lie. Instead I tend to say that it looks like "a turd".

But eco-minded people don't care about that. They want its great fuel efficiency so they can save the trees. Again I'm sorry, but that's not quite so. The quadrillion miles per gallon claimed by Toyota is, I'm afraid, a slight exaggeration at best. It's a bit like Colgate saying that if I use their toothpaste, my teeth will be like a Wilbur Smith protagonist's in two weeks. I did, and they aren't. They're excactly the same colour as they used to be. It's the same sort of thing with the Toyota Prius. It's got a normal petrol engine and an electrical engine as well, which kicks in and powers the car at low speeds, like when you're stuck in traffic. Great for the environment, according to Toyota. But the reality is that the electric engine and all the batteries and so on that goes with it weigh quite a lot. So the petrol engine will have to work much harder to move the car, therefore increasing both fuel consumption and pollution. The result? Well, according to tests done by people who know much about these things - not Toyota - you'll be better off buying a VW Polo diesel. It'll give you more miles per gallon. It looks better. The newer Polos are about as big as Golfs, so you'll have all the space you could want. Being German, it won't have to take into account such mundane things as the laws of physics, so it'll drive better. And it'll be cheaper as well.

So what's the point of it, then? A survey shows that 75% of Prius owners didn't choose their car because it was "green", but rather to make a statement about themselves. I don't really know what that statement is, but I can guess. That they are a bunch of utterly boring, useless, dumb, Hollywood-celebrity-worshipping vegetables, probably. If they really wanted to make a statement about their greenness, why didn't they climb onto the bow of an oil tanker? At least them getting hosed off the sides of the ship and into the freezing Atlantic ocean would make for great TV.

So a hybrid isn't really an option. An electric car, then?

Oh, please. Where do you think the electricity comes from? It's not magic that makes it possible to plug in your G-Wiz and charge it overnight. It's because someone has built great dams, blocking rivers and killing all the salmon; or burned lots and lots of coal, turning the sky grey and killing all the birds and trees, while releasing enough CO2 to kill off a small country. And that's hardly great for the environment. Plus, with a top speed barely exceeding that of a man in a wheelchair, you'll be causing massive traffic jams so that everyone else will be releasing all the CO2 the electric car doesn't. Then you'll just stop, because it's winter and, in the cold caused by the world heating up, you decided to turn on the heating, thereby reducing the range by 25%. That's a loss of 25% before you take into account the extra loss of range that goes with trying to keep up with the rest of the traffic.

You'll die, too. If you crash in a normal car, there are "crumple zones" designet specifically to crumple and take up most of the energy of the impact, shielding the driver from harm. A Reva G-Wiz, for example, is classified as a quad bike, so it doesn't need to have those. The crumple zones in a G-Wiz are your knees. And because it's made from cheap plastic - or paper, I'm never quite sure - your knees will be the only thing that protects you in the event of a crash. In all areas that matter - speed, comfort, safety, style and greenness - it is clearly useless.

I can only conclude, then, that the only way to get by is driving a normal car. That means you can get places quickly when you want to without having to look like an idiot or die. And your neighbour doesn't have to wonder why his roses smell like kebab.

[[R-COM]Outlawz]

Do you want to get home after a late night on the beer and kebab? You'll have to walk, I'm afraid. Do you want to come home alive? Too bad, because the hatches in a bus' roof seem to be made specifically not to let air in, so you'll die from lack of oxygen. That is, unless the biggest woman in the world has insisted on sitting in the seat next to you - as she will always do - in which case you will have been crushed or eaten before then.

I LOL'd, so true

[Brummy]

So what's the point of it, then? A survey shows that 75% of Prius owners didn't choose their car because it was "green", but rather to make a statement about themselves. I don't really know what that statement is, but I can guess. That they are a bunch of utterly boring, useless, dumb, Hollywood-celebrity-worshipping vegetables, probably.

Haha!