Roller Skating Home
June 20, 2006
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
I guess I’ve been indelibly scarredmarked by being born in the 70’s, as there are just certain things where CB slang comes immediately to mind.
In this case, the Chevrolet dealership in Amarillo arranged for a rental car through Enterprise. Since GM is paying, they chose the economy model, so I ended up in a Cobalt. I immediately dubbed this car “The Roller Skate,” in honor of CB slang for a small car. And it is definitely small, especially so for someone accustomed to an Avalanche.
This car was also pretty much bottom-end when it comes to options. I’d forgotten just how much of a pain it is to deal with manual locks and just how much I’ve come to depend on cruise control (as the occasional foot cramp I experienced last night will attest).
Categories: Random Ramblings
I just got back from Okinawa, Japan. The Cobalt would positively be a luxury saloon over there (it would be among the largest vehicles on the road anyway). Some of the cars were tiny. You wouldn’t have liked it.
The top speed was usually 50 km/h (one road had 60 km/h) so there wasn’t a lot of need for an engine bigger than 800ccs or so.
If the car was any smaller, you’d almost expect clowns to get out after me…
Hmm… those speeds might explain why people don’t understand America’s desire for large vehicles. When you’re driving 700 miles at 80mph (about 128 km/h), you don’t want to be shoehorned into a tin can.