Trying to be Smart

I think my editor has some personal vendetta against yours truly that I am not aware of.  The evidence is pretty damning: he chuckles every time I get miffed about something, purposely assigns me to drive the cars he knows cause me trouble, and sends me on overseas assignments at the moment when I am least inclined to go abroad.  Apparently I produce better work when I am in dire straits.  So he says.  Does this count as abuse? Here is the grand quandary: I know he does it for the benefit of the Publication.  It's just my bad luck that what is best for the Publication happens to be what is generally bad for me.  The best writing I do is not when I'm under pressure, or when I'm excited to be an intrepid reporter, or when I'm being repressed by the violence inherent in the system.  I write the best simply when I have a thick frown.  My editor knows this, and goes to great lengths to keep my frown consistent and my feathers ruffled. Case in point: "Hey, J-, I've got a beat for ya.  Here's the keys to a 2009 Smart ForTwo.  Drive it for a week." Now I have tolerance for most cars.  Cars are not like people. They don't do things that make you hate them because they can't do anything.  They are inanimate objects, so therefore, it is not their fault if they are grade-A pieces of flying cow-pie.  Thus cars have an innocence about them: you can't hate a car if it is bad, you can only hate the people who made it that way. With the Smart ForTwo, there is something about its sneering little face and miserable scrotum-like shape that develops within me an irrational hatred towards it.  It is the epitome of an automotive gimmick.  No matter what the boffins and clueless mainstream media buffoons say, its fuel economy is not spectacular, and when it does drink, it demands spicy premium.  Cha-ching.  So can we stop with the green argument and actually talk about it as a car?  It is not made from biodegradable young saplings, and it does not shit artesian spring water.   It's got seats and a steering wheel, and a little motor that puts out carbon dioxide like all the rest.  It is NOT special. And that is the reason why I dislike the Smart.  Slick marketing and an undeniably noticeable presentation has rendered the Smart a cultural icon without any sort of meat or background to back it up.  The Smart is sort of an automotive incarnation of Barack Obama. Walking out of the Publication's humble offices and seeing your assignment parked next to a brand-new Dodge Challenger SRT8 tester is a demoralizing experience rivaling the realization that you've lived your entire life in the Matrix.  Every great accomplishment you have achieved in life was part of a simulation; it never happened.  I personally felt like all my years of journalistic experience, the misery I put up with for the sake of my craft, had all been in vain.   Opening the plastic door of that Smart had to be the greatest anti-climax of my life.  I was prepared to give the most biased, one-sided, dishonest, personally-motivated opinion of my entire career. Wow, this thing has a lot of room inside.  The first thought that went through my mind was positive, so that's no good.  I should have been complaining.  Okay, let's fire up this guinea pig of a motor.  Oy, it sounds pitiful.  Memories of the unmistakable clatter of the old Volkswagen Beetle's air-cooled "engine" came to mind.  The Smart I was driving was the base "Pure" model, MSRP $11,990, and had about as many bells and whistles as a wooden plank.  Considering the state of the financial world at this time, twelve grand for a car the size of a Roma tomato seems like wishful thinking on the part of Daimler's bookkeepers.  This "Pure" had the standard 1 liter 3-cylinder gasoline, which runs on (remember this one, folks?) premium fuel.   That's right.  The "fuel efficient, green" car of the year runs on the expensive stuff.   That is properly batty. The idea for the Smart was originally dreamt up by the Swiss watchmakers Swatch, back in the early 1990's.  Spearheaded by Swatch CEO Nicholas Hayek, the designs and plans to create the ultimate, efficient city car were shopped around to various manufacturers.   General Motors shunned the idea as being potentially unprofitable. (And that was back when GM stock was worth more than your 5-year old's milk money!)    Volkswagen wanted in, but had to back out just as fast;  their financial situation at that time was too dire to take up the hefty new idea.  Finally, in 1994, it was Daimler-Benz who agreed to build the "Swatchmobile" in purpose-built "Smartville" in Hambach, France. In 1998, after its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1997, the first Smart ForTwo rolled off the assembly line, greatly modified from Hayek's original vision.   The biggest change was Mercedes' scrapping of the "super-super-super eco-friendly" part of Swatch's plan.  Instead, the Smart got a petrol engine. A small petrol engine, mind you, but a petrol engine nonetheless. Not so innovative, especially for the Swiss.  They did not like it.  Heavy losses and disputes did not help, either, and the joint venture between watchmaker and carmaker had to end.  Daimler has since held the Smart phenomenon close to their bosom, and over the last ten years, coaxed it forward into the world automotive theater.  Now the Smart is available in North American markets such as Canada, Mexico, and the US; and most recently, Daimler AG has introduced the car to Asian markets: China, Japan, and Taiwan. It is all well and fine, this expansion.  Yet the amateur economist in me cannot figure out one market: North America.  The reason why the demand for the Smart is so high in Europe is because street in Europe is a precious commodity.  Centuries of urban build-up has rendered the classic European city a no-man's land for most vehicles of American proportions.  Rome is literally ancient, and I do not think the Caesars had Citroens and Alfas in mind when they were building the Eternal City's byways and highways.  Neither did the Anglo-Saxons consider queues and traffic patterns when they were building out London.  In the New World, city planning was used, streets were mapped, roads were laid all from scratch.  America's transportation infrastructures are comparatively young to those in the Old World. As population increases, the amount of road in Europe does not, therefore it is necessary for cars to decrease in size to be able to utilize what road Europe has left.  Here in the grand old US of A, we have lots of space to build extra-wide parking spaces and extra-wide interstates.  Main Street USA is one big wide swath of beautiful, jet-black, steaming asphalt.  We are the nation of the great American highway, the Route 66s, the interstates.  We have roads leading in and out of our arses.  So who needs a Smart? Pleasant thoughts like this ran through my head as I puttered down a massive street in southern California.   The car was just too damn small.  I could do a bloody u-turn without leaving my lane.  Also, I had a feeling that I would look better in the car if I had a paper bag over my head.  Just for anonymity's sake.