Monday, February 2, 2009

The bizarre ways of Detroit: no cheap car?


A car for less than $ 7,000? I keep wondering why we do not have a simple cheap car. The Europeans have one: it is called the Chevrolet Matiz.In fact there is a French one that is cheap but looks sleek too: Renault has a nice car called la Logan.

Fiat has a smaller, cheaper car and India has promised a car for about $ 3,000 (the Tata Nano) but it has been delayed by trouble with the recession and with their factory site.
I used to have the funniest small van when I was in France, it was a GME with Japanese and German parts sold by Opel. It was perfect: you could access your stuff from the sides, the front, the back and it had an incredible capacity for accepting weird shaped objects, dogs and cats: I filled it up when I moved to the US from France and went gaily to the airport with all my stuff. It was so narrow that you could touch the right side window without moving from your seat. The van was also high. As a result, if there was wind, you felt like sailing rather than driving! Apart from that, it was a little marvel. But as long as Detroit is convinced that everybody loves big SUVs except me, there is little hope to have a fun car around here.

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