Rant of Crampzilla the Green

I can already tell it's not going to be a fun end-of-month. Thankfully the worst of it's hitting over a weekend again. But when I found myself ranting to the Saturn website (about something that IS fundamentally true, mind, but which I doubt I'd have taken the time to rant about any other day of the month/year), I realized I'm turning into Crampzilla.



Here's what I just dumped in their web box:

My 99 Saturn is the first new car I ever bought. I really like my dealership and their service and so far I've been really happy with the car's endurance.

What I'm not happy about is your current and future car lineup. I want my next car to be some form of alternative fuel car, whether a hybrid or an E85 ethanol-based car. Ideally I want the car after that not to need gasoline at all. If I could get a Saturn that ran on ethanol or on hydrogen, I'd be delighted. If you had any plans for a sedan-sized hybrid, I'd make that the next car I bought. I am completely not interested in a "hybrid" the size of a truck or SUV. I want an alternative fuel car for a combination of environmental, financial, and moral reasons.

But a search doesn't find the word "hybrid" anywhere on your website, and "alternative fuel" doesn't turn up as a unit. Several months ago I read that GM plans to offer hybrid SUVs but no hybrid sedans. I came here again looking for more information, and now I can't even find any plans for hybrid SUVs. I am both confused by and disappointed in that.

My father retired from General Motors, I love what the Saturn brand stands for, and I want to be able to continue supporting the company when my current Saturn eventually wears out its wheels. But I also want a car that's a part of the 21st century, which means looking for an alternative to straight gasoline.

I believe the world can't afford to keep using the same dwindling fuels, starting more wars, and pouring more carbon dioxide into the air with its singleminded attachment to petroleum for transportation. I want to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Of all the divisions of GM, I'd expected that Saturn would be most likely to understand that, and most likely to develop alternative-fuel cars, whether it's through hybrids or ethanol or hydrogen fuel cells. The fact that I can find out more about Toyota, Honda, and even FORD alternative-fuel cars (Ford has an E85 sedan currently available in my market) than about Saturn alternative-fuel cars is disheartening.

Please urge your upper management to reconsider your short-sighted denial of the alternative fuel market and the consumers who buy cars in it. I am both a Saturn fan and an environmentalist, and I don't want that to have to be a contradiction in terms.

...yeah. It's, er, true, just surprising that it all dumped out of my head tonight when I should've been making lime-green-colored email demos. Of course, I suspect part of it was triggered by the "car keyed" => "must fix car" => "sooner or later will need new car" => "what are the options" mental food chain, but still.

Beware of Crampzilla the Green...