So I decided to take three of this blog's favourite topics and merge them into one. That's gotta make for the greatest blog article of all time, right? The first topic is video games, and specifically Colin McRae Rally.
CMR has been one of the greatest series of rally games ever, and I say this having played only CMR2005, and no other competing rally games that may be better. It's unforgiving, and very hard. At least, it is for someone who plays on a keyboard. Whilst I was playing I started thinking about how great some of these cars are. For those that didn't notice my brilliant textual maneuver, this is a segue into the second topic: Cars.
Even the Audi A3 has some nice engineering behind it. They've all got some ethos which makes them decent cars. Handling, power, drive style. You drive them all differently and it's always interesting. This is brought out even in the road models. Whether it's V8s or rally cars, there's something about the road-going version that makes you feel the engineering behind it, and it feels good. These cars have been put through their paces in rallies and what's been learnt has gradually filtered over to the road models.
Which brings us to the third topic: women, the Nissan Tiida, and the future of cars. You see, women don't want power, handling, and feel. They want price, comfort, and "safety". That's why you see the smart cars and the Priuses, the Suzuki's, and now the Tiida. You see, Nissan's always produced some nice cars, including the bluebird, the skyline, and the pulsar. The pulsar might sound like the odd one out in that list, but it was quite good for what it cost. I'm not sure it won, or even entered, any rally championships, but it was still a good car. However, the fact that it's kept Nissan alive has taught nissan a particularly bad lesson: Make cars for women.
The problem with women is that they generally don't really care about V8s or rally cars. They don't care if their car handles like a dog, and doesn't have the power or control to be able to safely get out of a bad situation. They want a car with doohickeys so they can talk on their mobile and apply their lipstick while driving. They want a car that has colour and styling to match their clothes. They want a car that's shallow and useless, much like they like their men, which I'm going to use in a flawed analogy to justify my own singleness.
"Safety" in these cars means that once they're in a crash, they'll probably save your life, but they'll probably be that much more likely to be in a crash. You see, rally cars are bred to not kill the drivers in extreme circumstances. They handle better so they're less likely to cause a crash. Girly cars are built to offer a big rubber stamp of "SAFE", for the kind of person who's too busy "multitasking" to maneuver their cars*. Is this really the way the car industry should go? Whatever the answer, the industry is headed in this direction, whether we like it or not.
* The writer doesn't know any real women and has crashed his car twice in as many years.