The 1958 Edsel, ugly and mediocre as it was, with its vertical slash like a gaping wound symbolizing all the red ink that gushed onto Ford’s balance sheet, became a laughingstock not because it was so far out of the ordinary, but because the public had been whipped into expecting the extraordinary.
But at least only Ford lost money on the Edsel. We’re all losing money on the Nissan Leaf, thanks to the taxpayer subsidies that willed it into the marketplace. Each time you see one of these glorified golf carts flit by, you should be thinking: There goes $7,500 of my money.
And the best part is the
clean commuting:
Hey, wait — the Leaf is supposed to run on ordinary household current, right? That means it’s useless for most apartment dwellers (go ahead, ask your landlord if you can run an extension cord to the building’s power supply) but fine for suburbanites. Only those suburbanites who have a lot of time on their hands, though: a PM test driver said it took 34 hours to recharge his Leaf using ordinary 120-volt household power. “For most people,” the gearhead magazine sheepishly noted, “the time constraint might preclude using the Leaf for everyday commuting.”
Ya think? A vehicle that takes a day and a half to charge can’t be used every day? Wasn’t the whole purpose of the Leaf supposed to be short everyday commuting? What good is it if you can only use it Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? The Leaf’s failures recall an old joke people used to tell about the Jaguar in the ’70s: If you want a Jag, you need three of them — one in the shop, one for parts, one to drive.
Another masterful stroke by Hopey McChange - a stroke of his base of eco-tards and a wallet-whipping for the productive citizens. Nice legacy...
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