this was i the 60s.

And they sent the rabbit back wards and forwards again and again and again.

they recycled the rabbit.

Christophe

the genesis of cars and bikes in the US and Europe stem from the roads.

this seems odd I know but let me explain.

The US roards are very very long and as straight as possible, the vehicles were expected to go very long distances.

the best solution to that was big lazy low revving engines.

Thios produced the US automotive pardighm, V8 cheverolets and Super large inline V twin bikes like the Harley and the Indian.

Eurpean roads are well basically amazingly old, windy a wee, the distances are really not that large, you can drive through about 5 northern European COUNTRIOES before lunch.

This gave rise to the European automotive paradigm, small high revving manual geared cars such as the Morgan the Bugatti for the fast and the Morris the Super Snipe and the Fiat 500 and 2CV for the slower types, even the bikes differ fromn the US, we have the Enfield Silver bullet, the Norton the Vincent, goign on to the danish Nimbus and the Brough Superior (the bike that killed T.E. Lawrence) which are all narrow nimble high revving sort of things, great on the corners of which Europe seemed to be made entirely of.

To extend thiws idea, when iot came to gettign cars and bikes in Australia, which you'll recall was a British colony, the up take of UK style cars and bikes was minimal.

The huge distances and the straight roads made the natural choice US.

The cars in Oz are all V8 and Big Sixes, australians have a higher Harley ownership per head of caopita than the US does.

But the thing is that the engineerign has improved.

The Japanese genius engineers managed to wring better power performance and economy out of cars and bikes than either the US or Europe had ever managed, and they continue to do so year in year out.

Europe learned the lesson and we all drive if not Japanese cars then cars modelled on their principles, the US didn't, and still persists in seeing anything not a V8 as being gay.

Even the Aussies got over this one and happily scoot around a country the size of the US with a population the size of LOndon in Japanese Camrys and Suzuki bikes.

John P,

yeah your point is well made, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but even then your 73 bug is getting 25mpg, which is easily better than US four wheekl drive suburban monster trux get.

And that is a 35 year old using 60 year old technology.

the first rule of fight club is that you don't post on Neatorama about fight club.

could you imagine what it would be like to be one of these people and suddenly all of the rest of the world arrived.

It'd be like the sky peeling back revealing giants who peer down on you

It was just out side of Barstow when the drugs took effect.

I need everything painted with this stuff

this was posted in Boing Boing, and really nicely illustrates how the US has really played a very poor hand when it comes to energy.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/05/how-to-drive-oi.html

wasn't there a rabbit powered zip line across the US Mexico border in the 70s?

some one fired a cross bow bolt under the wire, attached to the bolt was a thread, then string then steel wire. they tied a line to a rabit and the other end had a ring on the guide wire.

You'd attach about a pound of heroin to the rabbit give it a shot of amphetimine and it run along the guided path.

Or diod this only hasppen in my head|?

There has to be a name for the period of time between seeing a video on line and discovering it is a viral advertising campaign.

Subsequently feeling sullied

HollywoodBob

If your US cars give such terrible MPG, then get a better car.

It needn't be new, just better.

Hell get yurself a 70's beetle and it'll be like living in the future for most americans fuel wise.

there is nothing wrong with the Internal combustion engine, nor with cars.

There is however a LOT wrong with what passes for engineering in the US.

Your cars are amazingly heavy , with laughable fuel efficiency.

In Europe we've had the samall 1 to 2 litre engines in the hatch back for decades. These are not particularly advanced cars at all. but they do leave US cars for dead.

It only hurts so much at the pump because the US mind set is wrong. You don't need so much petrol, if you weren't driving a 4 to 5 litre car on crappy automatic gearing pulling several tons of metal about you'd have that money in your pocket not shooting out of the exhaust pipe.

Carbon Fibre bodies small super efficient engines and the US life style need not be too badly effected.

Hell Europeans shouldn't be too smug either, we havce to get our collective fingers out and fix or own problems.

But if the US adopted 30 year old European style cars they'd save themselves a lot of finacial woes as well as whipping the Sheiks arses, and effectively bankrupting those who fund terrorism.

But could you imagine if the US leap frogged the rest of the world and implemented Algae Bio Fuels as well as carbon fibre, double glazing and all the sundry other ideas that the Rocky MOuntain Institute has been recommending all these years?

Tax cars based on fuel efficiency would seem most of the old style vehicles off the road in 10 years, also big tax breaks for the highest efficincy rated vehicles and it'd be boom time in US industry.

That is of course if there were any companies in the US who realised that firing your workers and gettig the job done in Mexico for a fraction of the cost doesn't so much reduce your overheads as reduce your market.

Who can afford to buy the car when the car manuifacturer has laid off the customers?

Any way I digress, buit my basic point remains, enironmentalism is a rich vein of potential profit for industry.

If you are going to do a fake jump then try and do it better than this one.

If anything is thrown or jumps it describes a perfect parabola, kobe flew in an effective straight line.

Which to any human eye looks wrong.
This inate ability to understand speed and parabolas is how we can throw a ball to one anonther, we compute the parabola etc in nanoseconds.

this just read wrong.

You've never seen blokes go for broke on a dance loor 'til you've been to a Sikh wedding.

Ony Bangra-Man can save us now!

Good god could Piers "weeping wound in the world" Morgan be less rythmic?

He's a cartoon of a white posh boy.

E

do you actually for even one second think that the REST OF THE WORLD gives a good god damn about the world series of ROUNDERS?

Good god, your conceit knows no bounds.

And as for "we call it that to annoy people like you" , yeah sure mate, all part of your Master Plan.

yawn.