I have a truck - see Selected Articles for my justification - but I don't have what the Americans would call a truck. Mine is a mere Ford Ranger, built for non-American wimps. What the Americans mean by a truck is the Dodge Ram SRT10, which is brilliantly reviewed here.
What is striking about this review - and, indeed, all American truckery - is the defiant tone. These machines are environmentally insane and don't even make any practical sense - who needs a 510 hp truck? What for? But a lot of defiant American exceptionalism goes into these trucks. I think this is because, unlike cars, trucks are self-contained. You could load one up with supplies and take off into the wilderness. They advertise the fact that you can do what you damn well please, including, if you have an SRT10, overtaking cars by driving over them. Trucks are a right, which is why, in the US, they are utterly classless. Here, of course, they are class poison. One friend said sniffily that he couldn't buy a truck because he'd look like a painter and decorator. In fact, I'm now thinking of getting an SRT10 precisely to redecorate his house. Terminally.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I think the SRT10 link should be read aloud with a full-on Jeremy Clarkson accent to do it justice. I like the "As American as..." suggestion. Fun for all the family there. "As American as a dumb uneducated American in a big truck with furiously concealed sense of disquiet and inferiority that this is all a bit pathetic?"
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