There is perhaps nobody in the world less qualified to write about cars than myself.
Before marrying Anthony and sharing his Saab, I had an old Volkswagen, at least, I think it was a Volskwagen, but it might have been a Toyota. That's how much of a car person I am. Anyway, I had this car that was shaped like a milk carton tipped on its side. I named her "Sugar", because she was my sweet ride. Which is to say, she got me from Point A to Point B, and cured me forever of any fears I had of driving stick shift; once you can parallel park without power steering in a stick shift on a San Francisco hill, you can drive anywhere.
One day, I ran into my downstairs neighbor, Joan, who is a fantastic handyman, except that she's a woman. She asked me how the steering felt in my car. What a coincidence that she should ask! Sugar had been driving like a dream for the past couple weeks. I told her, in amazement, that it was as if I suddenly had power steering! She looked at me oddly for a moment, until she finally decided that I was not in any way kidding or teasing her. And then she told me that two weeks earlier she had changed my tire for me, because it was so flat. I think she was wondering why I never thanked her, and at least during this conversation she had the epiphany that I wasn't ungrateful or rude, just utterly and hopelessly clueless about cars.
I tell you all this as a preface to my discussion of the Renault Twizy. Now, I'm all for electric and hybrid cars, but there's something about this one that smells like failure to me. Then again, the French embraced the oddly truncated Smart Car before the US. So if you see this whizzing along the streets near you in the near future, don't say I didn't warn you. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Before marrying Anthony and sharing his Saab, I had an old Volkswagen, at least, I think it was a Volskwagen, but it might have been a Toyota. That's how much of a car person I am. Anyway, I had this car that was shaped like a milk carton tipped on its side. I named her "Sugar", because she was my sweet ride. Which is to say, she got me from Point A to Point B, and cured me forever of any fears I had of driving stick shift; once you can parallel park without power steering in a stick shift on a San Francisco hill, you can drive anywhere.
One day, I ran into my downstairs neighbor, Joan, who is a fantastic handyman, except that she's a woman. She asked me how the steering felt in my car. What a coincidence that she should ask! Sugar had been driving like a dream for the past couple weeks. I told her, in amazement, that it was as if I suddenly had power steering! She looked at me oddly for a moment, until she finally decided that I was not in any way kidding or teasing her. And then she told me that two weeks earlier she had changed my tire for me, because it was so flat. I think she was wondering why I never thanked her, and at least during this conversation she had the epiphany that I wasn't ungrateful or rude, just utterly and hopelessly clueless about cars.
I tell you all this as a preface to my discussion of the Renault Twizy. Now, I'm all for electric and hybrid cars, but there's something about this one that smells like failure to me. Then again, the French embraced the oddly truncated Smart Car before the US. So if you see this whizzing along the streets near you in the near future, don't say I didn't warn you. But I wouldn't bet on it.
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