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I have in my time loved everything about "petrol" cars (other than twisted wreckage and maimed bodies): the history, the eras of design, the chrome, the sound, the sensation, all the smells.

Every car with its own interior smell, repository of memory. You can smell your way around the outside from hot oil under the hood to exhaust. Mmmmm, good ol' 8-cylinder well-tuned rumbling exhaust. Stood behind a balky Duesenberg being started once and when the straight-8 finally caught, the blast of exhaust rippled my pants leg and the cloud rose around me like incense.

But it's time to let all that go. We can't afford those pleasures anymore. They should probably be regulated and licensed, experiences for museums and exhibitions. Much as I love it all, an internally combusting car race is a haughty orgy of unwarranted waste.

The auto industry is years behind in putting electrics and hybrids on the road. Is the technology as done as it's going to get, is it the final solution? Probably not - but any petroleum we can manage not to burn is a good thing. These cars need to happen. And when they finally do start to happen, the industries that improve and perfect them can be thriving American manufacturing employers.

A car like the Venturi is one way to push this down the road: performance and looks to capture the imagination of car guys, not just green Nader car-haters who drive decaying Metros with Hug-A-Tree bumper stickers till they can afford Priuseseses.

Why most of the industry has insisted on building electrics and hybrids that look so god-awful hideous is a mystery to me. They don't need to make green transportation with the kind of Volvo/Saab reverse-design-snob look that appeals to none but starchy environmentalists; they need to make gorgeous (or at least mainstream) cars that turn all us into environmentalists.

quote ChiroVette

I fooled around with Burnout III, but never got too deep into it. From what I saw though, Burnout III is a GREAT game, very different than MCIII, but I am not sure about better or worse.