Backseat Driver: Driving a Lamborghini exposes my hypocrisy
10:21 AM Wed, May 28, 2008 | Permalink
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Lamborghini Gallardo Dick Tuck writes to my blog about the discrepancy between my comments printed in last Sunday’s projoCars section on the decision by the Interior Department to declare the polar bear threatened and the cover story about the 360 horsepower 2008 Pontiac G8 GT. Mr Tuck is right to point this out, and all I can say is that I have no say on what we choose to run on our cover, in this case a test drive by Larry Printz of The Virginian-Pilot. Mr Tuck goes on to accuse me of hypocrisy in accusing George W. Bush of making polar bears “swim for it.” Actually, the Interior Department seems to be trying to save the bear, but it’s best not to think of such things. However, Mr. Tuck is again right in calling me a hypocrite. I cannot help it. I am a Brit and, as everybody knows, hypocrisy is the great British vice. I suppose it’s the price of a social tyranny! So I will add fuel to Mr. Tuck's fire of indignation by admitting to an act of gross hypocrisy that I committed on Memorial Day – that of taking a bright yellow Lamborghini Gallardo out for a spin. What defense can I muster given my green proclivities? I mean to say, the Gallardo, with its 520 horsepower 5 liter V10 engine, 0-to-60 mph in 4.2 seconds and top speed of 200 mph, gets a combined 13 miles to the gallon! And it makes a lot of noise. But what a noise! Something between a growl and a cackle that says just one thing: POWER! And all clothed in an apparition of design. Forgive me, Mr. Tuck, when I admit that driving such a car over the bridge from Newport to Jamestown and back again on a glorious sunny day with the sail boats below like puffs of cotton on Narragansett Bay – well, you see what I mean, don’t you? I get positively rhapsodic! What explanation can I offer? That it was research for an article I am writing about The Otto Club of Boston that leases out such cars to club members? No, I cannot pass the buck. Driving a Lamborghini is the ultimate fantasy and given the chance, I took it. And I took along my 14-year old stepson Pat, who is a car nut, and at one point during the drive he said simply: “This is heaven!” And it was. - Peter C.T. Elsworth 
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I'm very heartened to hear that Brit hypocrisy is alive and well on that side of the pond.
Keep up the good work Peter and remember that on the basis that you didn't actually hit a polar bear on your traverses there need be little guilt associated with it; especially in a country that condones the wanton waste of resources in the banal contests that are monster truck races.
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