A need to slow down & actually live life.

As an owner of an automobile & one time motorcycle owner, I have my views on the pros & cons of owning as well as driving them. When I first started driving it was on the red dirt roads of the province I call home, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Gas was around 65 cents an Imperial Gallon, and the roads were my second home. My first car was an ex RCMP highway interceptor, a Plymouth Fury 440 Commando engine. If you're wondering what that means, well, if I put the gas to the firewall,your body would feel the push of G-Force. How proud I was to own it, after all, it cost me $600.00. I worked to save enough to buy it. 

During that time in my life I was a risk taker both with my car & motorcycle. I had several close calls due to my actions & thinking how great a driver I was. Obviously, it was more luck that I'm here to write this than my skills as a driver.

Over the years I've changed vehicles several times, mostly due to just wanting a change. That attitude changed around 26 years ago when I realized that when it came down to reality,owning the latest greatest auto meant I'd also be in a never ending loop of making payments for the loans & for what. We can never keep up, someone likely near you just bought something better, right?

There's no doubting autos last overall much longer than they did 30, 40, 50 years ago. Engines that once were expected to last 60 thousand miles (roughly 97,000 km) often rust would ruin a car before that. Of course there were exceptions, there always are. But the strange thing was that overall, people kept their autos longer than now. They rebuilt motors, transmissions, had body work done & the cars repainted or did a lot of these things themselves on their days off. In these parts & many other areas, owning a "bungalow" & having a part of an acre of land was considered to be doing well & most couples had at least two children. 

Then, sometime in the first to mid part of the 1980's autos changed & so did the way many people viewed their status in life. Chrysler started a new trend with the Mini-van in 1984 & soon they were everywhere, Ford, GM, Toyota through Mazda. In the 1990's another trend began. People were buying trucks even though the majority had zero reason to own one. In he past ten years we've seen the rush to buy "cross-overs", a sort mini-van/car. Now I see ads for autos that will take over & parallel park for you. 

Autos made in the past 20 years can last 10 years & some many more than that. So why do I see so many new autos on the roads? Are the advertisers just doing a fantastic job or does it go far deeper than that?

We've come to a time where standard transmissions are becoming few & far between, I've been told people don't want them or don't know how to shift gears. Personally, if it's a small car, I don't want an automatic. 

The big shiny new trucks are wonderful to look at & some ride as well as a car, but rarely do I see one that's used for actual work. You remember when truck owners were pretty much farmers, fishermen, tradesmen that rarely had time to wash them & dents & scratches were common. Not often anymore though. Typically, what I see is just the driver without passengers & rarely is there a speck of dirt on them when the weather is good, even this winter I see most have been washed even though a snowstorm is on the way & the roads will be a mess. Some of these trucks are $40,000 & prices go way up from there here in Canada, That would have bought that pretty nice "bungalow" around here around 1980. Prices go up but there are so many cheaper in price autos than these trendy ones that are all the rage now & some of them last longer than the more expensive models, much longer.

So, my question is when times are so tough & the typical family is 1.? children, why the need for such expenses? Huge homes & huge overvalued prices, just like the autos.

It seems to me that many in society have lost or never had a healthy sense of self worth. We live in a time where how you look, what you drive, where you live never meant so much to so many. 

My view is we need to get back to living simpler & being content without the trappings of more is better.

I'd love to hear what others think. 

Best to you all.