Cigarettes and Lamborghini’s

There is a commonality I have noticed between Lamborghini’s and Cigarettes, and no it’s not that I had to look up both words for correct spelling. I was riding from a venue in Toronto to my hotel a couple months ago, and rolled past a Lamborghini dealership where they were having a little party in the parking lot. They were chatting, hanging out, having a good time, and many were smoking. Now, where I live in Vancouver, it has become increasingly out of fashion to smoke, almost to the point where you are looked down upon or cast out, or given demeaning looks. I’d hate to be a smoker just for those reasons, let alone all the health risks. I think this opinion of smokers is becoming quite common in many parts of the world, especially where the habit is now banned from public places, even bars, which I think is fantastic!

It seems I am beginning to feel the same way about Lamborghini’s as I do about cigarettes. Why would you inhale toxic chemicals in to your lungs on purpose, and why would you spew out high doses of carbon from your 650 HP engine. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Sure cigarettes were a brilliant concoction at one point in history, and there is no doubt that sports cars have brilliant engineering, craftsmanship, and thought behind them; but times change. Take for instance this following excerpt from a fantastic book I am reading right now called The last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (this won’t be the last I speak of this book, it’s fantastic, actually order a copy right now!!):

Increasingly, the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for centuries are now moving from the useful to the not useful category. An example of such a story is the biblical order to have as many children as possible. In the days of Noah and Abraham, the tribe with the largest number of young men to create an army was usually the tribe that survived. Be fruitful and multiply was a formula for cultural survival, even though in nearly all cases it then led to and when you run out of resources and living space, kill off your neighbor and take theirs.

Sure, there was a time when cruising around in a Lamborghini smoking a cigarette would present an image of exclusivity, but the times, they are a-changin’.