Big Dick, Little Car

If conventional wisdom about the relationship between automobile size and penis size is to believed, I must have a really huge cock.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying that I do have a really big dick, but I'm not saying that I don't, either. I mean, it fits in my pants... at least most of the time.

But I definitely do have a car that's the anti-thesis of the stereotypical "compensating" car that so many Americans (especially insecure American males) prefer these days. It's a Chevy Metro, and before the Mini Coopers started showing up in North America, I had bragging rights to (implicitly) one of the biggest dicks in town. I drove an over-sized Honda Civic for several years, but before that I had a Ford Festiva, which - if not for being cheaply made - would've been a perfect car for me.

If I were in the market for a car, and could afford to buy something new, I'd definitely consider the Mini, for its combination of convenience, performance, fuel economy, and style. But I've recently seen another alternative that's making its way to North America, that makes your typical Mini owner look like a pin-dick: the Smart Car.

They're already fairly popular in Europe, where the roads are narrower, parking is scarcer, and unsubsidised fuel prices are substantially higher. (The Mini and its peers have been available in Europe for quite a while as well.) Even though it runs entirely on gasoline or diesel (no electric assist) the standard model gets 60mpg or higher. It only seats two people - which is why this model is called the Fortwo - but that's not a limitation, it's a feature. Every "compact" car I've owned has had a back seat, and in the two decades I've been driving them, I've had someone sit in my back seat about five times. It's wasted space; take it out and give me a smaller, lighter, more efficient car. The Smart Fortwo also doesn't have a trunk or cargo space, which would be an inconvenience for trips to the store or laundromat, but since I never have a passenger when I do that, I'd manage easily enough.

One thing I love about driving a small car is the ease of parking it. Not only can I use the "compact only" spots in parking ramps and lots, I can fit it between poorly-spaceed cars at the curb, and I can often pull into full-size metered spaces forward, without having to do the "parallel park" routine. With an 5-foot-wide and 8-foot-long Fortwo, it'd be even easier. Heck, you could even perpendicular park without it sticking out very much past the 7-foot-wide trucks on either side.

Of course there's the issue of safety. Mercedes Benz (who makes the Smarts) says they've engineered it to be more structurally sound than a more traditional design... kind of like the difference between an egg and a shoebox; even though the egg is made of, well, eggshell it's studier than a box-like cardboard... box. Most cars will crumple and fold when hit; this one is too small to. Granted, there's still the automotive arms race to consider, in which people keep buying bigger and bigger vehicles to protect themselves from other vehicles, but at this point anything less than a mid-sized SUV is fodder for the tanks, so I don't think it'd make much difference.