The guys living in the Republic of Maldives are probably some of the luckiest people in the world when it comes to nice weather, sunny beaches 365 days/year, turquoise water, palm trees, incredibly fine white sand, etcetera. But, as nature always likes to compensate, their tiny capital of Male – having an area of just 5.798 square kilometers (2.238 square miles) – has some of the shortest streets in the world. If you were to find a straight road there with a length of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) it would be something, though I seriously doubt it...
Even if the tiny city is literally packed with motorcycles, the young Maldivians also own cars. Not a lot of them, but enough for everyone to make a very simple and truthful categorization of the car "breeds" out there. In Male, there are only taxis and cars. Everything is very simple, although apparently, you'd think that since they're driving on the wrong side of the road they're as complicated as the Queen's subjects.
In the Maldives, any car that doesn't have two doors is automatically classified as a "taxi". In other words, these people have rapidly understood what the deal with sports cars is. Moreover, they've simplified everything to the extreme: there are cars (sports ones) and there are taxis. A simple and perfect conclusion!
I find it amazing that a bunch of people living on a tiny island have arrived at this conclusion, are organizing drag races on any small patch of asphalt they find and are fanatical supporters of real sports cars. This is happening while the EU's roads are congested with French econoboxes, Italian crapmobiles and lots and lots of other POS cars from "emerging markets" - like Skoda, Seat, etc.
This is also while BMW is launching another five-meter mammoth with seven seats, dubiously explaining its customers how they're about to drive a very sporty car, while Porsche is revealing a diesel SUV, pressed by the hillbillies who want to plow with a Porsche, and while Audi has began to rival locomotives by building a Q7 as ugly, as stupid and as exaggerated as the twin-turbo diesel V12 underneath one of its versions' hood...
The European Union is choking by polluting diesel piece of crap cars, the United States is still filled with Goliaths sporting V8s that hardly crawl away from the stoplight, the UK is infected with motorized fashion accessories and the Land Rover refrigerators on wheels, while a few tanned people on an exotic island are teaching us what a car actually means. It has to have two doors, it has to be fast and it had to have pleasant seats. It's what they're calling a "car".
If you're now thinking that you're driving a taxi, learn that you can still change that. And if you're driving a diesel, don't tell anyone and quickly change it with a car that sports a refined gasoline engine. If gasoline is expensive or the fuel consumption is too high, just walk. It's healthier both for you and for the future generations...
Now get yourself a real car! Leave taxis in the hands of professionals!
Source: http://www.autoevolution.com
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