Hybrid=Hideous

So, I start a blog on cars and bikes; thoe glorious inventions that have revolutionised our world; captivated its inhabitants; shrunk horizons; killed millions; saved millions more; infuriated the ever-increasing minority; inspired wine, song and poetry; served as master and slave; been ridiculed and deified, set free and incarcerated.
These things I love more than any other man made object; that to me represent art and passion, soul and beauty. I think about them, I dream about them, I study them, I remember their details, I feed on their scent and I dance to their soundtrack. I rejoice in their pomposity, their playfulness, their arrogance, their deadliness, their delicacy.
Cars and bikes consume me.
So what is the first post in my new blog? Something that I really don't like and which I do not understand.
Hybrid cars.
OK. Let's start at the beginning. I don't love just cars, I love the engineering that goes into them. I love the diversity of the solutions conjured up by the designers; how so many roads can lead to the same place; motion. I love the almost infinitessimal number of shapes that can be sucked from the aesthetic sense of mankind to clothe these things.
But I do not understand why, when a man is capable of inventing something that could not only save the planet but could also save the car from extinction, does he have the aesthetic sense of a blind squid looking for a mate?
This is a huge problem. Why is it that every car that purports to be environmentally friendly to any greater or lesser extent have to be so damned UGLY? Where in the galactic rule book of automobile styling does it say that if it doesn't kill you with its emissions, it must slay you at 30 paces because it is so ugly or you choose to die because you simply cannot conceive that anyone could have thought that it looked good; the knowledge that someone, somewhere looked at this and said 'yep, that's the styling taken care of; might just pop round to the local and try and pull a bird in this' when in actual fact they were looking at a melted wheelie bin. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but there is a limit.
A new one has just croped up in the UK, caled the Riversimple. (God only knows why its called that, and therein lies another clue to the designer's aesthetic sense). And it is quite simply the most hideous thing I have ever had the misfortune to look at. OK, so it can run for three weeks on a potato, but you wouldn't be seen dead in such a thing. And there's another thing - you probably will die in it because it looks as though it has all the structural integrity of a plastic bag so if you so much as run into anything more solid than a tomato it will simply fold up in despair and trap you inside it. Then, passersby will be laughing so much that you will wish you were dead. Hit anything more substantial, such as any car on the road, and you really will be dead.
Most environmentalists, although privately admired by some people, are numbered amongst the most hated people on earth. Why? Because they are forcing change upon us when we don't want it. Mankind doesn't do change very well, especially when we are told to. We might acknowledge that something has to be done about a certain topic, but we'll do it in our own time, thankyou very much. And that time is usually when it is far too late, but at least it we are doing something about it.....!
So, to raise your standard and declare so visually that you smugly think you are doing something for the planet and 'aren't you being good ' is to paint a huge target on your back whilst handing a gun to your local petrol station owner.
The environmetalists amongst car designers and technicians have ignored the one basic tenet of marketing; make it look good! And it is the most important. Why can they not see this? And why, more to the point, has no-one who is involved with car styling, piped up and said something to them? even the most ambivalent motorist has some aesthetic sense which he uses to choose his next means of transport.
With the possible exeption of the Tesla, which is too expensive to be realistic, there is not a good looking, original (as opposed to modified extant production car) energy-efficient car out there. Even the Prius looks bloated and it wheels are too small.
And this is a shame because, as much as the thought of strangling the mighty roar of an American V8 or the throaty rasp of an Italian twin-OHC four or the lumpy rumble of a Ducati twin saddens me beyond belief, something is going to have to give in the long run and if you take away the heart of the machine that is 90% of its allure the remaining 10% has to be able to compensate.

Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!

And right now it doesn't. Not by a long shot.