Now we've all seen the tide turn, smashing the SUV against the rocks like a third-world fishing boat. If you drive one in Europe, you may as well have set off a dirty bomb in a schoolyard - such is the naked aggression towards the forest-burning, baby-seal-clubbing chariots of death.
Even the car mags take an apologetic approach to Mother Earth before turning in a favorable review. The green movement is winning. And that, well that makes my blood simmer to the point of separation. Because if we tolerate this, then our children will be next.
The SUV rampage has nothing whatsoever to do with fuel economy, the clean diesels on the far side of the Atlantic will do no more damage than the noxious protestors will cause on their way to yet another anti-something march in their beaten old Renault LeCar. It is automotive bigotry based on shape and heresay, the kind of rhetoric bullshit that makes it okay to invade Land Rover's factory and slash tires across Paris.
Now soccer moms that queued round the block for the Cayenne have abandoned their battle wagons, in case their neighbor spits at them. And they've probably shifted their order to the Prius - a rolling lie when it comes to economy figures, as any magazine that has tried to achieve Toyota's claimed figures have found.
Still, the facts are lost in a sea of screams and indignant rage. We live in a world where the loudest voice wins, not the most rational, as George W has proved with devastating effect.
And governments across the globe have bowed to this perverse form of eco-terrorism. The Mayor of London recently unveiled his plan to tax them out of the city, shortly before he was suspended for comparing a Jewish journalist to an Auschwitz prison guard. Even the Germans, the land of the free when it comes to raw speed, have declared war on a whole breed. It's working, too, SUVs are now only marginally more popular than Betamax, and Pauly Shore.
But here's the kicker. If the environmental lobby feels it has momentum, feels it has won a small battle, you think they're going to stop?
No, they won't, they'll spot that a Ferrari uses more fuel than an Escalade, even a BMW M5 at flat chat will drink a light truck under the table and a Bentley Continental could suck the desert dry on a long haul. And they'll keep coming until we're all going to work on solar-powered trains or worse, one-liter hatchbacks with some batteries strapped on them...
Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, then V12s, V10s and V8s of all descriptions will come into their maniacal, hair-trigger sights. In the true spirit of mob rule it won't even happen in a logical order.
If it works once, it will work again, so I say fight for the right of soccer moms to take one child to school in an oil tanker. Campaign for the nouveau rich kid to drive something so big it could wipe out a small metropolis when he gets it wrong and if you were even contemplating buying one, do it, even though it will handle like wet cement and get covered in pig's blood and slogans by an enraged vegetarian pacifist.
Because if we tolerate this, the sports car will be next...And that is a fate that should chill any Pistonhead to the bone. [by Nick Hall]
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