Green vs. Guzzlers

Richmond-upon-Thames is a fairly wealthy suburb of London, and for the car buff it is a spectacular place to live. Expensive and exotic cars line almost every street, and here the Porsche 911 is as common as the Toyota Camry. Around the corner from our university sits an Aston Martin, the James Bond car, in all its glory. BMWs and Mercedez Benz can be found all over, and the occasional Rolls-Royce and Bentley can be seen (and heard) flying down the streets of Richmond on any given day. It has become a fun game to try to spot the most expensive car we see as we walk down to Tesco (after the Aston Martin of course). The ultimate winner was the white Lambourghini seen in Kingston while a few of us were shopping there one day. The driver saw us gawking at it and gave off a show, revving the engine and speeding down the street. Pure Beauty. With all of these luxury cars and sports cars on the road the thing that is surprising is the number and different kinds of Smart cars that are seen frequently. While when most people in the United States think of the Smart car as a tiny round bubble on wheels, over here there is a lot more variety to the brand, and while all of them are quite small they do boast even a convertible model. The British people must be on the green bandwagon, as the very efficient Smart car seems to be almost as popular as the luxury brands here. I am not certain if the Smart car has become a status symbol here yet, but I believe that if I were to come back to Richmond a few years down the road there would probably be a lot less of those gas-guzzling luxury sports cars and a great deal more Smart cars in the driveways of some of these wealthy people.