ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Ever wonder why the automobile just keeps getting better? I do. Some say it is a way to keep raising the prices. Not true! I have an example of how prices are lower.

Competition gives us better cars. I think competition amongst auto manufacturers has been the key driver in getting us better cars each year.

I have not been driving a petroleum sucker that long but at the barber shop the other day, I got thinking how long it really has been. All the young fellows there were complaining about the high price of gasoline. Gasoline, when I started driving was around $0.35 per gallon and I got paid $1.50 an hour. It took me 14 minutes of labour to put one gallon in the tank on Friday night. And the old Ford took me twenty miles on that gallon. That would get me to town, cruise the drag, go to a movie and get me home. Today, to take me to the grocery store, drug store and perhaps a restaurant for dinner, if I have been a good boy, it is about the same distance (20 miles or 32 kilometers). Because I am now driving one of those Korean buggies that gets 30 plus miles to the gallon and I am now paid closed to $20 an hour, I need to work…well would you look at that… 14 minutes.

My point so far is that all things are relative and gasoline is not getting any more expensive, it is just that we all agree we should not waste it on gas guzzlers. So Detroit and the rest of the automotive world are doing their best to build better vehicles.

I had this brought home the other day with a guest at the old B&B who had what I thought was a most interesting job. As an automotive engineer techie type, he worked on the design of the seat that goes in your car. And since he is a supplier to one of the Little Three, he has to tow the line and make that seat better than the next manufacturer or he finds himself another job. So to make a better seat, it has to contain all the latest gadgets such as heating coils, air conditioning ducts, weight sensors for air bag deployment, motors for all the adjustments, a frame that withstands the force of an atomic bomb and most important of all, a comfortable, yet durable cushion and covering.

So here is where the job gets interesting. In research and development, you have to try out the product and you have to do it a lot of times to make sure you can say you have the best seat available. So this techie fellow in the white coat assigns the task to a robot. As you can gather, the job of a seat is to support the derriere and the rear end of most patrons is made up of two butt cheeks that by nature don't just fall straight into the seat but rather slide into that seat. That's where the durability comes in. So my techie friend clads his robot in blue jeans with rivets no doubt, to imitate the touché of a typical patron. Then he makes that robot slide in and out of that seat 150 thousand times, at which point he sees if the fabric or leather has failed. What a job! Oh, and since he has about two dozen types of seat covers to test, he has a whole room full of these robots testing seats. I forgot to ask him how long this takes but I presume 150 thousand asseyez vous' is the typical lifetime of a car. Guess what the name of this research is called….Butt checks.

Net result; a better seat. This story from the verandah is true and I don't think I am revealing any trade secrets when I tell you how Detroit tests car seats. Look around the car you are driving right now and tell me what's so wrong with it that makes the good old days of $0.35 cent gas look better. The cars are safer, they go further on a unit of fuel, the bodies last longer and so do the seats.

Addendum.

Since this is the Corn Producer Magazine, here is a quick reference to the past in fuel prices compared to a bushel of corn. Unfortunately, my whole yarn this month is blown out of the water when we use farm dollars.

Let's say 1965 diesel was the same as gasoline at $0.35 per gallon, corn was around $1.20 per bushel and yields were around 85 bushels. Today's diesel is $4.55 per gallon, corn is $2.60 per bushel and yields are 130 bushels per acre. In 1965, my one acre of corn could buy just over 290 gallons of fuel. Today's acre of corn can buy just 74 gallons of fuel.

On the second thought, let's get back to the good old days.