… Is sad and completely without passion.

I just, for the first time, drove a Toyota Prius and I can’t say I was thrilled, I cant say that at all. Now don’t get me wrong, weather or not you buy into the notion that our cars are heating up our planet, causing climate shifts or sweaty penguins, there isn’t anything wrong with trying to reduce the impact we have on our environment. But why can’t we do it without sacrificing the enjoyment of living life? As we move from childhood into maturity we are forced to say goodbye to so may of the little things that gave us joy. We trade the feeling of wonderful abandon, spending our days running through the sunny back streets of our neighborhoods for cubes and desks and fluorescent lights. Gilt replaces the simple pleasure of a candy bar and, at this time of year, the wide eyed wonder and excitement we once had watching the boxes and bows accumulate under the Christmas tree is replaced with the realization that someone has to pay for those and concern themselves with how that’s to be done when one is fearful they may soon be without a job.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father taking me to the San Fransisco auto show. We spent the night walking the floor through the rows of new cars, my dad pointing out all of the exciting ones, the red ones, the ones that went fast. At the end of the night he bought me a toy car. It was a white 911, the kind that you had to wind up my dragging backwards before you could let it go and watch zoom away. I spent that night winding that little car back, letting it go, winding it back, letting it go, all the while making happy “vroom!” noises and dreaming, for the first time, of how when I grew up, I would get my self a real Porsche.

Now, at 21, I wonder if that will ever really be possible. At the moment I obviously don’t have the means to purchase an $80,000 car but I’m working on it. However, the way I see the automotive market changing makes me think that, instead of one day buying my dream car, my only option will be to fill my garage with some dull, emotionless, hybrid/electric box. This makes me very sad, especially after driving one of these dull, emotionless, hybrid/electric boxes.

There was no growl when I pushed the “start” button. I did not put a foot on the clutch or throw the gear shift into first but instead selected “drive” by pushing another button. This button was located above reverse, neutral and neuter. It took a minute after the car began moving for the engine to actually kick in. This did not make me happy either. To be totally honest, there was really nothing exciting about driving this car. The steering took effort and not the good kind, the gas pedal didn’t seem to do anything and after parking it, there was no looking back to admire it because, really, it doesn’t look like anything.

The wonderfully green Toyota Prius elicits no excitement, stirs no emotion what so ever and is completely without aesthetic value. It is a toaster, a transportation appliance. Yes, it will get you from one place to another. Yes, it gets decent gas mileage. But must it only deliver practicality?

I don’t want to sacrifice the feeling you get when you’re pushed back in your seat, the feeling of being involved with the car, the relationship you have with it. I want the kind of feeling you get when you put the top down and drive just a little to fast, the feeling that comes from that little voice inside of you that’s still left over from those younger years, the one that’s saying, lets see what this thing can do. There is no replacement, no alternative technology for the rush that come from sitting behind the wheel of a car built not by people in lab coats but by men with greasy hands and passion, drivers, or at least by people who still have the spirit of such men.