12 Wonderful Wagons We Want →

Wired.com loves the station wagon.

Say hello to my new swagger wagon. Driving it has helped me uncover a new sense of identity for myself:

Q: What kind of person am I?
A: The kind of person who drives a station wagon.

"Since businesses are obliged by zoning restrictions to locate far away from residential areas, most Americans drive to every store they visit. This means that store visits are often discrete trips that must be undertaken consciously and planned out ahead of time. As a consequence, shoppers will want to visit stores that carry the most diverse inventory—Wal-Mart, Costco, et al.—and avoid shops that specialize in one particular kind of good—the local paint store or flower shop, for instance."

Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit, a really wonderful list of the myriad reasons why car-dependency weakens families, entrepreneurship, and the bonds within a community. Walkable neighborhoods aren’t just for hippies and enviro-nerds! (via marco)

"The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed “infinite riches” in what would have been to motorists “a little room.” The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates distance.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given… A modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten."

C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. This is one of the reasons I love biking and walking places, even for short distances: without a car, travel is a conscious choice, and requires a degree of planning and forethought that car-based transportation lacks. (via beenthinking, via mills)

"If the car is to prevail, there’s still one solution: get rid of the cities. That is, string them out for hundreds of miles along enormous roads, making them into highway suburbs. That’s what’s been done in the United States."

Copenhagenize, writing about The Social Ideology of the Motorcar

If your fob is lost, you'll sob over cost →

Not only can you not get newfangled key fobs duplicated at any old hardware store, but they’ll set you back at least $200 if one gets lost or broken. (And am I supposed to take my keys in to the dealer when the clicker’s battery inevitably goes dead?)

My wife now has a new car. 2008 Beetle S, harvest moon beige. Neither one of us had driven a European car before, and in the approximately 12 hours that we’ve owned this one we’ve fallen absolutely in love with it. The only downside is the big honking key — do they really need to combine it with the clicker? I’d rather carry the valet key instead.