We’ve all got opinions, but some of those takes are hotter than others. Sometimes we’re the only people brave enough to say the real truth, but we hope that others are at least brave enough to hear — perhaps, to even understand. Earlier this week, we asked you all for some of those hot takes, and today we’re looking through your answers.
I have two big hot takes, at least depending on the audience:
1. Big cruisers (Harleys, Indians, BMW R 18 Transcontinentals, Honda VTX, etc) are awesome. Yes, I love my little Buell and I bought a brand new Royal Enfield, plus I get the biggest smile riding something small and nimble. However, every once in a while I just want to staddle a big 800+ lb American-style steel horse and gallop down the highway.
2. Big diesel trucks are also awesome. More than enough power to yank down a mountain, four wheel drive, tens of thousands of pounds of towing capacity, and some of them can be quite luxurious. Gosh darn it, I LOVE the sound of a clickety clackety diesel in the morning.
I had absolutely zero interest in big cruisers until I rode, of all things, another Enfield. Now I’m hankering to try a Low Rider S and truly understand what it means to be Jax Teller. Please don’t email me to say he rode a Dyna, I know he rode a Dyna, but I prefer bikes without a death wobble.
I’ve harped on the issue before, and how people are so blithely unconcerned about the sheer weight of EVs crunching asphalt and buckling bridges. You think America’s roads and highways are crap now? Wait’ll the cumulative effects of EVs pounding them takes hold.
Given an ICE-V weighing in at 4000 pounds and an EV clocking in at 5000 pounds and utilizing the road damage formula:
We find that an EV, weighing 25% more, yet causes 240% more damage. And plenty of EVs such as the Origami Truck and Hummer EV weigh thousands of pounds more. So get ready for potholes galore—yet the silence is deafening about this issue.
Plenty of responses to this comment talked about how it really just refers to weight — not necessarily the causes of that weight. Sure, plenty of EVs are incredibly heavy. So are plenty of gas trucks, diesels, and don’t even get started on semis. The reality isn’t that we’re faced with an EV weight problem, but a vehicle weight problem.
Submitted by: the1969DodgeChargerFan
Drivers licenses should be far more difficult to get. And they should implement a tiered license program.
You should only be allowed to drive a small 4 cyl that comes in under a certain weight and hp with an initial license. After training and testing you can move up to higher hp and larger vehicles
Every 100hp could be a level, as well as every 1000 lb car
And if you want to buy a truck you have to show with documentation that you actually need a truck otherwise you will automatically be assigned a Subaru Outback
Plenty of other countries have figured out tiered licensing, but here in the U.S. of A we’ve got too much freedom for that kind of restrictive communism. Did you know Australia forces P-platers to drive cars with less than 174 horsepower per 2200 lbs of weight? That’s the same as an economic system in which resources are allocated by the workers, collectively, according to need rather than via a free market system of commerce! I am very intelligent.
My hot take, which I have said over and over and over again: if we want more cool little sports cars, we need better public transit.
Because we live in a country where a vehicle has to be able to do everything because there’s usually no other option, most of the options we have for vehicles are big do-alls, AKA SUVs and crossovers. You need a car that can haul appliances and commute to work and take your kid and his friends and their fetid hockey gear to that away match and drive in bad weather and get good gas mileage because damn is it expensive when you have to drive everywhere.
Now: imagine that you didn’t have to drive to work every day- you could take a train or a bus or a bus rapid transit line or whatever. And, it was reasonably quick, comfortable enough and cost less than the gas it takes to get you to the office. And it runs in all weather so you no longer have to drive in the snow if you don’t want to. Imagine your kid’s school is not just a walkable/bikeable distance from your home, but there’s infrastructure built to keep the kids safe to and from. Imagine that we have high speed rail running between big cities and regular rail running between smaller cities and towns, so instead of having to drive to Lexington for an away game in an ice storm, you can just take the train, and the gross hockey gear is in a cargo compartment instead of 5 feet behind you.
Imagine that this is the world you live in, now think- Do I need an SUV anymore or can I just get a nice sporty sedan? Or a small sporty thing? Because now, I don’t have to drive, I get to drive when I feel like it.And there’s less people on the road, so traffic gets better. And now, because you no longer need to be able to drive 500 miles in a day, an electric with a range of 200 miles seems totally fine.
Caveat for the “herp derp whatabout...” Yes. I know there are people who actually need trucks to haul tools. And I know there are people who work on farms and in rural communities where it’s not practical to have public transit. I GET IT. But right now, the casual estimate is that only 14% of americans live in rural areas, so let’s stop basing our public transit discussions around this small group.
This is the crux of many car enthusiasts’ ideals — the ability to have a car, and the luxury of not needing one. When you need a car, it has to meet all the requirements of your life: Cargo space, fuel efficiency, seating. When you can do all your daily tasks without a car, and it becomes purely a pleasure object, there’s no longer a reason to eschew the Miata for the Acadia.
It is ok to think of your automobile as an appliance. For most of the general driving public your car is a way to get from point A to point B. We don’t all have to be enthusiasts.
It’s hard to justify a Genuine Enthusiast Market from an appliance, because there’s no difference between those two things. Is a watch an appliance? That’d make Andy’s collection of them pretty dumb. Is a chef’s knife an appliance? I don’t at all regret the money I spent on my beautiful santoku. It’s all about where you spend your time, effort, and focus.
Automatics and drivers assist technology have made society worse at driving.
I’m team save the manuals, but I also recognize that autos, specifically DCT, are almost a must in anything with more than 600hp. The GT Black Series I was test driving would have been ruined if it was a manual. But for the general non enthusiast public, automatics have created a driving culture of impatience and distractions. Just watch people waiting a light, how they just creep forward every dam second as if the light is going to change faster, or hey lets just put on our makeup in traffic since you can just drive with 1 foot. As for drivers assists, I’m not talking about actual safety things like ABS and the like. but The amount of times I’ve almost been side swiped despite the car next me having the bloody blind spot detectors illuminated is a bit concerning. Someone said it to me on here: “smarter cars create dumber drivers.”
As someone who has driven a stick shift vehicle while eating a chicken sandwich, holding a meal in one hand while alternately steering and shifting with the other (it’s not something I do regularly, but it’s a thing I have done), I assure you that manual transmissions are not some magical lockout against distracted driving. You can scroll TikTok with three pedals just as easily as with two. It’s not the car’s fault.
I have two hot takes:
- Gas should be taxed to get the price to $4-5/gallon. It would push people into more reasonably sized vehicles, EVs and PHEVs; and the tax revenue can be used to fund public transport and road infrastructure.
- The building codes should be changed to require EV charging supported by solar panels and local storage. This would solve one of the big hurdles to reasonably priced EVs and PHEVs.
You mean to tell me that a comparatively low-profit-margin business model doesn’t have investors flocking to it, the way they do with the highly-subsidized fossil fuel industry? And that, perhaps, a reduction in those subsidies or an increase in money going to green initiatives might begin to balance out the financials, thus encouraging a faster EV transition? Well I’ll be.
No-one has ever ‘got out of trouble’ by accelerating.
Okay, your uncle did one that time. But, compare it to the number of times the same people get *into* trouble by accelerating.
I was specifically told that dodging in between the lanes ahead of me was safer, as a motorcyclist, than being hit from the rear while waiting at a light. This would be a nonissue if New York would just legalize lane filtering, but, alas.
PHEVs are better than EVs
Just because it has a manual doesn’t make it automatically great. There are some cars that are better off with an auto because the manual just isn’t that good
Morizo, glad to have you with us today. I’m somewhat surprised that your account name has an Anchorman reference in it, but who doesn’t love Adam McKay’s early work? It’s been weird the past few years, though, I admit. What were we talking about?
I don’t think most car mods should be legal. Especially if it is slammed or the squat, or truck nuts.
Surely you wouldn’t ban the Hatsune Miku McLaren, right? Right? Aren’t some mods just too good to fully do away with?
I have three:
1. Crossover is just a stupid marketing term and they should just be called SUVs.
2. Minivans were awful to drive for a long time and now that the only choices are Toyota, Honda, Chrysler, and Kia, no one should be shamed for buying an SUV instead of one, no matter the reason for the choice.
3. While it doesn’t necessarily make a boring/bad car fun/good, coupe versions of sedans and SUVs are good. They keep the car landscape interesting, often look pretty damn good, and offer a way for people to drive something more interesting if they wanted a sporty car or traditional coupe but can’t feasibly make it work.
I fully acknowledge the aerodynamic benefits of a coupe crossover’s sloping rear end. I’ll even admit that some — mainly the Cayenne Coupe and Mustang Mach-E — actually look pretty good. But you cannot tell me that the mainstream of the genre, the GLCs and X6es, look even close to as attractive as their squared-off counterparts.
My hot take is:
There are actual Jeep owners that actually off road their jeeps.
They are not ALL mall crawlers. I hit at least 4 off road parks several times each every year. Spend 1-2 week a summer in the back country and several weekends in addition with several jeep clubs full of jeeps that are off road. FFS just skip the damn mall crawler comments on every Jalopnik article about a jeep or some other 4x4. Effing pedantic trolls keep beating that dead horse so much, that it is just not funny any more.
I would genuinely love to see a map of where the term “mall crawler” is used the most. I grew up knowing it, and applying it to most heavily lifted Jeeps and trucks, because I lived far from any sort of off-roading territory — everything in the tri-state area out here is so densely developed or privately owned, there are few places to actually use those mods. Out in, say, Montana, I imagine things are different.
American automakers should be required to produce a small economy car without all the tech gadgets and barely used features that drive up the costs.
I also feel there should be higher speeding fines based on type of vehicle. Something that is big, heavy, more likely to have multiple passengers and so on is more dangerous on the road to everyone around. Unlike a small sports car or motorcycle that is more dangerous for the driver/rider than it is for everyone else. A person going 90 mph down the interstate in a lander rover with a backseat full of kids is going to be far more deadly and likely to crash than someone in anything smaller with better handling and less occupants.
I assure you, the “tech gadgets and barely used features” aren’t the only things driving car prices up.
I’ll die on this hill every time Jalop asks us for hot takes: the last gen Chrysler 200 was a good car.
I mean, I feel like I got it all in the title here.