Born To Be Mild

 "They don't make 'em like they used to."

This phrase went through my head as my wife noticed the "New Mustang" zipping past us on the highway. "That's not a Mustang," she muttered. I agreed with her, and I was proud to have passed this sentiment along to her. Coming from a woman who still makes a little squeal each time she sees a Nissan Leaf on the road, it is a little surprising that she could maintain any kind of disdain for an electric vehicle. It is my conviction, and the one that I passed along to my bride, that if you've got in your head to make a fancy new electric car, come up with a fancy new electric name instead of trying to get us to fall for this bit of chicanery. A Ford Mustang is a relic of a bygone era, "Before the Motor Law" as Neil Peart once put it. A sports car. A muscle car. A beast that could only be made in Detroit during the 1960's. Preferably in red. 

But this is another age, and I understand that we are all making do with the reality in which we now live. Like in the mid-seventies when Ford unleashed the Mustang II. America was wrestling with an energy crisis, and the lines to buy gas went around the block. Something had to break. So they broke the Mustang. In two. After a period of time where cars like Camaros and Challengers started to bring back that big V8 feeling, the Mustang returned to a facsimile of its former size and shape. In red, even. But of course, this machine came with the asterisk of *fuel efficiency and the potential of purchasing carbon offsets to chase that climate guilt away. 

Then they went and did that EV thing, and I haven't been able to get past it. 

And apparently, neither has my wife. 

We are a one car family. That car is a pre-owned Toyota Prius. The fact that the Electric "Mustang" zipped past us in the fast lane may have had something to with the bad taste left in our collective mouth. Any latent drag racing impulses we might have were left behind us long ago. 

Which didn't keep us both from laughing out loud when we saw a Cybertruck ambling its boxy way out of the shopping center parking lot. They never used to build them like that, and they should probably stop right now.