Letter from a friend to a Newspaper

To the editor:

Re: "Designer dreams up car just for Canada," by Tony Wong,
March 3, 2005.

Italian car designer Ken Okuyama calls up typical stereotypes about Canada
and Canadians in his proposed feature list for a "Canadian" car. 
Is it any wonder that the sketch produced by the Star most resembles a cross
between a Gremlin and an AMC Pacer, two of the most-reviled car designs in
modern history?

I say throw out Okuyama's list. He may know something about
Ferraris, but he knows nothing about Canada.

The fact is, most of us live in cities. More and more of us
will do so in the future. Our roads are paved. Many of us live in downtown
cores with car-clogged streets, near our places of work and shopping.
Do we need 4x4s or an "aggressive stance", honestly?

I've arrived at a list of my own. I trust you can get someone
to draw you a picture.

1.      A simple vehicle to take us over the smooth roads of our cities

2.      A low-cost vehicle to serve as a social equalizer, affordable to
the wealthy and the poor equally

3.      A small-footprint vehicle: literally, in the sense that
it takes up a small space for parking and driving; figuratively in the
sense that it uses fewer resources to manufacture, service and fuel

4.      A lightweight, clean, 21st century vehicle, strong enough to carry
its passengers and cargo, and light enough to be carried over barriers

5.      A facilitator of social interaction, encouraging of neighbourliness
in our increasingly dense cities

6.      A climatically-appropriate vehicle that allows the fresh breezes to
cool us when it's hot, and lets us keep ourselves warm by dressing appropriately
when it's cool

7.      A vehicle capable of attaining predictable, sane speeds as it transports
us, our groceries, and those children too young to captain their own vehicles.

This sounds like a vehicle most Canadians would recognize as their own.
Do we even need a sketch artist to tell us what it might look like?
To me, it looks like a bicycle.

Given climate change, increased urbanization, increased air pollution and
energy costs, the bicycle is the only sane vehicle for the 21st
century in Canada's cities. The sooner we embrace this fact, the
better this century will start to look. We don't need any fancy
race car designers to tell us otherwise.

Yours truly,

Jake A.