The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

Correction, please, about British drivers, their cars

By IAN YOUNG

I wrote this in response to an interesting article written by Carol Bogart about the rising price of gas and moving closer to work.

I did, however, call her to task on her cultural reference--a pilot from Britain--and his somewhat faulty generalization that "nobody drives luxury cars in Britain. They all drive cookie-cutter non-descript little boxes that are good on gas."

I thought this somewhat ironic, given that the Camry, Corolla, Civic and other econoboxes outsell other cars by a large margin here. And everything else is, it seems, an oversize, boxy, fuel-inefficient SUV or truck ... hardly a place filled with luxury vehicles, even around here.

I'm proud to be an American citizen, but I spent my early years living in the UK and while Britain has tiny roads, it's no more full of econoboxes than anywhere else--including the US.

What Britain does have, however, is a great variety of decent sports cars and luxury cars. Does Bentley ring any bells? Perhaps Rolls Royce or Jaguar? Not to mention the plethora of sports cars--McClaren, TVR, Lotus, MG, Aston Martin--the list goes on. And no yuppie would be seen dead in the UK without their 'accessory' extra BMW, or maybe Mercedes.

Fuel efficient? Well, the pilot got that part right. Many family-size turbo-diesels will return 60 mpg, highway, and still do zero-60 quickly for a family car. 40 mpg would be considered 'fairly good' but by no means outstanding.

To put things in perspective, gasoline hasn't been below $4 a gallon since I left the UK over 7 years ago ... I believe right now, it's at around 1ukp per liter, which equates to around $5.80 for an American gallon--the price of gasoline is in France right now is $7 a U.S. gallon.

The sky hasn't fallen over there because high gas prices have less impact, mostly because most major European roads were built long before the car. Each community is far more compact, freight is carried shorter distances, by rail. Distances are less, cars are more efficient. A double-whammy on saving gas.

But Carol's article hit some very valid points--this is a wake-up call: As soon as China gets onboard with its own industrial revolution, expect gas prices to surge even higher. There will be a cultural shift as energy becomes scarce. We need to conserve what we have, as well as find new ways to move ourselves around.

But for right now? I'd love to be walking distance to work. Forget the gas prices. More time with my newborn son and less time on 101? Count me in. What I pay extra in housing, I get back in more time at home and less going, quite literally, up in smoke out of my tailpipe.

Ian Young, a U.S. citizen, is also a naturalized British citizen who lived in Great Britain for more than 13 years. A designer of games for cell phones, Young has work that allows him to telecommute. He is a resident of Sunnyvale.