HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 2009-04-22, Page 12Page Al2 - Goderich Signal -Star, Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The $2,500 Nano hits the road, fifty years too late!
It's here! The People's Car!" Finally they
made the car the consumer wants to buy ...
provided you're a consumer of foul air and
currently driving a motorcycle in downtown
Mumbai. Tata Motors of India is now taking
orders for the $2,500 Nano automobile and
demand is so high that 50,000 names of
would-be buyers must now be placed in a
computerized lottery draw.
Can you imagine thousands of people
lined up in front of a General Motors plant
... and not for the purpose of burning top
management people in effigy?
The Nano appears to be either a pregnant
Smart Car or the winner of a science fair
project sponsored by Lego. It's fairly fuel-
efficient at 23.6 kilometers per liter and it
can go from zero to 60 in a day or two
depending on wind conditions. The body
parts of sheet -metal and plastic are held
together with adhesives. Steel and welding
are not involved in the Nano's construction,
so accidents are to be avoided at all costs.
The Nano is a four -door hatchback with
seating for five people providing they all
..A.- .J14 OAT - sAw. A_ 1_ 4 __I ____A.A1111111111,_.
exhale at the same time. It's pow-
ered by a 30 h.p. Motor, and in
India, where it should be equipped
with a front-end cow catcher, it. is
not.
The glove compartment dou-
bles as the trunk, the air condi-
tioning is activated by rolling
down the windows and the air
bag is this Happy Birthday bal-
loon you blow up manually, just
before impact. The seats not only recline;
they fold up so you can take them to the
beach. You thread your belt through the
metal loops on both sides of the front seats.
Those are the seat belts.
The Nano is equipped with a snap -on
plastic top which when removed, becomes a
sun roof. Or you can leave it on, burp it and
store food in the back seat. The luxury edi-
tion comes with an emergency brake.
And what with a price of only $2,500,
North American Hummer owners no longer
have to worry about fixing a flat. Now they
can afford to throw away the spare tire and
just keep a Nano in the back.
At no extra charge, the Nano
comes fully equipped with really
bad jokes. How do you double
the value of the Nano? Fill up the
gas tank. What's the smaller,
compact version of the Nano
called? The GaGaGooGoo. And
what is the hybrid version of the
Nano called? The one that runs on
recycled human waste! The
PeePeePooPoo.
With a snub nose and a big bulbous back
end, the executives at Tata Motors must
have had great difficulty in deciding wheth-
er to name it the Nano or the JayLo. No
word on whether Robin Williams will don
the Mork outfit and do the TV spots: "Nano!
Nano!" (I'm having way too much fun with
this car!)
Seriously, the Nano is a good little car that
comes with no air bag, no radio, no passen-
ger -side mirror and absolutely no logic
whatsoever.
"Everyone who owns a motorcycle wants
R E N,QX
TIQrS.
r r '7 ernee tqai
Now Serving Goder,c & Area
momierig 4
improvements to your primary residence are
eligible for the NEW Home Renovation Tax Credit.
Ask us if your improvements qualify.
tions to ser
a Nano;' said Rahul Guglani, a salesman of
the world's cheapest car. So the already
hopelessly congested streets of urban India
are about to become a lot more grid locked.
In New Delhi, where the 1 l00 -a -day reg-
istration of new vehicles will rise sharply
with the arrival of Nanos, one person dies
every hour from air -pollution -related dis-
ease.
On most days New Delhi's atmosphere is
thick and brown with a soupy haze of smog,
but oh man, just get a whiff of that "new car
smell!"
Roy Chowdhury of New Delhi's Centre
for Science and Environment put the ques-
tion to prospective Nano purchasers: "Do
you want a congested polluted city or one
that promises a good quality of life?"
As a bit of an expert on human behavior
and in this, the Age of Destruction, I'm
going with "A - a congested polluted one."
In the race to poison the planet, India —
which sits fourth as the world's biggest pol-
luters behind the United States, China and
Russia — is desperately trying to medal.
It makes no sense whatsoever to flood
India with cheap cars that will clog streets
and lungs alike but in today's mad market
economy, that's exactly what will happen.
The fact of the matter is that the Nano might
be India's transportation of the future but it
should have been North America's car of the
past. If we had been driving small, basic,
low emission vehicles like the Nano for the
.past fifty years we'd likely still have an
ozone layer over our heads and the ice
shields wouldn't be melting into oceans that
get warmer by the day.
But to replace all the motorcycles and
scooters in India with low cost Nano cars is
ridiculous. We in the west have already pol-
luted the earth's atmosphere ,with tons and
tons of carbon dioxide exhaust emissions. To
the burgeoning middle classes of India and
China who now want to.: own cars — sorry,
you've missed your. chance. Do something
we always intended to do but never got
around to — act environmentally responsible.
"Beep! Beep!" No, the horn is not an
option.
Workers killed
on the job to be
remembered
April 28 is the day set aside to mourn
the loss of workers killed or seriously
injured on the job. This day has been ob-
served for 25 years and we still haven't put
a stop to the carnage. In fact the number of
deaths of workers increased by 30 per cent
from 2007 to 2008. Four people are killed
at work across Canada every day, accord-
ing to the Workers Compensation Boards
of Canada figures. Each day millions of
Canadian workers go to work to earn a
living. Each day dozens are seriously in-
jured on the job and too many are actually
killed on the job. We can do better! Join
the Huron District Labour Council for our
Day of Mourning Ceremony Sunday April
26 at 1:00 p.m. at the Workers' Monument
(top of North Harbour Road across from
the historic gaol). Public are welcome.