This week we’re vacationing at the family cabin on an island; the nearest town is Gibsons. Mid-week, we hit town to pick up groceries and hardware. Unfortunately, it’s a really demanding walk from the waterfront to the mall, particularly with a load to carry, and there’s little public transit. Fortunately, there’s Coast Car Co-op, a competent and friendly little five-car outfit. We booked a couple of hours and the closest vehicle was a 2009 Ford Ranger, described as a “compact pickup” or “minitruck”. It made me think.

Think back fifteen years · I got in the Ranger and tried to adjust the seat, but that was as far back as it went. It didn’t go up or down. There were no cameras to help me back up. There was nowhere to plug my phone in. It had a gearshift on the steering column that moved a little red needle in a PRNDL tucked under the speedometer. There was no storage except for the truck bed. It wasn’t very fast. The radio was just a radio. It was smaller than almost anything on the road. I had to manipulate a a physical “key” thing to make it go.

And, it was… perfectly OK.

The rear-view windows were big and showed me what I needed. It was dead easy to park, I could see all four of its corners. There was enough space in the back to carry all our stuff with plenty room to spare. You wouldn’t want to drive fast in a small tourist town with lots of steep hills, blind corners, and distracted pedestrians. It wasn’t tracking my trips and selling the info.

Car companies: Dare to do less · I couldn’t possibly walk away from our time in the Ranger without thinking about the absolutely insane amounts of money and resources and carbon loading we could save by building smaller, simpler, cheaper, dumber, automobiles.