my idling in my S-class to pick up the kids from private school is ok but you taking your kids to McDonalds drivethrough will destroy the planet.
I hate people that idle their cars needlessly... in the dead of winter, maybe. But out West I see people doing it all the time, and there's absolutely no need. Idling is horribly inefficient...
Why is it that people fawn over the R8 but condemn the Challenger as a gas-guzzler, when the R8 is no worse for the environment (better, I suspect) and capable of carrying four people (unlike the R8)? Just curious. I'm with most people that the R8 is a cooler car, but I don't understand why pony cars always get flamed by environmentalists while supercars don't.
Most supercars are barely driven. I got a copy of High Line Auto recently, which lists all of the Lambos/Ferraris/Astons et al. for sale in the States, and the vast majority of the supercars in it have less than 10 000 miles. Many have ~1500 miles.
They're also produced and sold in small numbers.
Muscle Cars, otoh, are mass produced and sold cheap (although I still don't see many SRT cars on the road). They're also often daily drivers. It also seems to me that supercars like the R8 are the products of intense engineering and development - I'd wager that their engines are relatively efficient given their power output. I recall that the Porsche Turbo is very clean compared to a Ferrari, for example. By contrast, US supercars seem to simply drop big, inefficient engines into big, heavy cars. Mustang GT500, anyone? That might be partly domestic bias... it'd be interesting to actually see some numbers, though.
It's not entirely fair, but the high cost of entry for supercars tends to keep them off the road, and combined with their better engineering, their impact on the environment is probably far smaller.
