My mustang doesn’t need 700hp. It’s much faster than stock, but its even been detuned to be more streetable. I get comments from strangers all the time asking me how fast it is. Of course, I daily drive a Model S and know that there are a zillion boring grocery getter vehicles on the road that are faster, so I never know exactly how to answer. In my mind the car is not fast, but it feels fast. If I want to be fast, I’ll take the Tesla, but then I’m in another boring store bought appliance that everyone else is, and that’s the real problem. Cars have become smart appliances that you can’t even work on. I don’t want to sound like that old person hating on fuel injection praising how marvelous carburetion is because I don’t understand technology. I mean that you can’t go to the parts store or dealer and buy parts to fix it yourself. You have to have special computer tools just to replace a headlight. Crap like that. All these modern “appliances” were built to become obsolete and unrepairable on purpose. Can’t hate on someone for buying a 500hp car when there’s not really a good way to add that to an existing underpowered car later on.
And you really need to understand that there just aren’t that many vehicles to get excited about any more. Many of the youngsters grew up in their parents boring truck/SUV/minivan. They did not have hot rod movies we grew up with. The street scenes nonexistent because of cruising laws, like actual laws forbidding your from just cruising, contributing to traffic. All the legal tracks shutting down. And of course 2020 killing any type of car gathering. Fixing up a car, you can do during COVID, but unless they decide to start watching one of the many fixer upper car shows, they may never get inspired. Plus, the economy. Much fewer have the disposable income to even want to consider a car. They’re getting their licenses later in life, and ride sharing more because it’s cheaper than actual car ownership. Like I said, it’s much harder to get interested in cars. Can’t even reboot Fast N the Furious. What cars will they use that would be more impressively faster than some lame Model X? At least back then they were cars young people could actually obtain.
But having the model that comes with the extra HP or is some laughable sort of limited edition variant... ...it becomes more of a status thing. Even my mom does crap like that. She will never use that extra HP, especially since she drives 10 under everywhere. She just wants it because it symbolizes her success in life. A car person might try to show it off, but to everyone else, it’s something you just bought because it was on the lot. In fact, I think one of my mothers old cars was an actual sport model because that literally was all they had in that color. Know what she did after that? Got an SUV.
(And so does building to handle power beyond where I am now.)
