[2Muchmark]

Hi Everyone,

First, please don't attack me. This is not a hate-post about the Camaro. I love the Camaro. Instead, this is about my experience of trading "sideways" to a new car that I also love.

Here's some background: I bought 10 Firebirds in various flavours between 1987 and 2001, plus a 2010 2SS and finally a 2013 2SS 1LE, and loved them all.

Ok - "Love" is too strong for the 1LE. Let me downgrade that to "Like".

The 1LE was fun to drive on a nice smooth highway, but sucked on the streets in Montreal thanks to potholes and general bad road conditions.

A bigger problem for me though was just overall value, and what I will call fun-value.

"Fun Value" includes attributes like Speed and cornering, but also includes things like Cost of energy, maintenance, ease of use, and a dozen other things, with cost of energy being the big factor.

I would love to open it up on the highway, starting the drive with a big grin. My grin disappeared quickly though when I would see the gas gauge fall before my eyes, small bumps making a big bang, and excessive tire wear (1LE's have hard sticky tires), and low traction when the temperature drops.

The biggest downer to me were the seemingly endless "hidden" costs of oil. Lots of oil spills happening all over the place, explosions including one here in Quebec last year, the huge disaster in the Gulf, etc.

I was having a really hard time at the pump. I can afford the gas this was not problem. Instead, I had more and more trouble, buying so much gas for a car that got such terrible milage, and paying companies for that gas that seemed to care very little about the damage they cause or show little interest in properly cleaning each of their messes.

I'm also a little bit of a science and numbers guy. In my business, we stream video and charge per minute for it. We manage lots of servers and look at stats and bandwidth, write software code, and forever try to improve things. When I'm relaxing I'm reading PopSci, watching Cosmos, Daily Planet, reading sci-fi and sci-fact. I'm not a "Granola" or a "tree hugging hippie", but I do know that rising CO2 as well as other "greenhouse gasses" are raising the temperature of the planet.

So I did a quick calculation. How much do I really "enjoy" my Camaro, and is that Enjoyment worth the cost? My answer was no.

So in January I put it up for sale and finally sold it last week. I then went to the dealer and drove away in a brand spanking-new Chevy Volt. In case you don't know, an over-simplified description of the Volt might be that it is an electric car that uses a gas motor as a backup. (I wanted a Tesla but the price out of my budget for now).

Like the Camaro, the Volt is alot of fun. Really! It's not a sports car and can't be compared to a Camaro, but in many ways it is more fun. Some of my on personal reasons why it is more fun is this:

- Very comfortable to drive. Sure its not as fast, but I could never drive the Camaro passed the speed limit without breaking the law anyway).

- It's cheap. I have driven over 700 Kilometres so far and not spent a dime on gas. I am getting about 70 Kilometers on a full charge at the moment, and a full charge costs me only $1.52 in electricity. The same distance in my Camaro would cost me $170.00.

- It's fun. I am now balls-deep in numbers, learning how to coax more and more distance out of every single charge.

- It's quiet. Don't get me wrong - The V8 Camaro has a sound like no other and they are pretty quiet considering, but a Volt is silent.

- I no longer worry about the price of gas. Here as of today June 4th 2014, the cost of regular gas is $1.48 per Litre, or $1.58 for super, or for you American readers out there, $5.97 per Gallon.

So in conclusion, if you are someone like me who is a little worried about the planet, is tired of big oil dismissing eco concerns, likes high tech, and is maybe just kinda tired of paying so much for gas, you just may want to consider a Volt or other electric car. Sure, your friends may laugh and pick on you as mine did to me, but so what? Listen to your friends concerns, but then do your own research and consider giving one a test drive. Coming from a guy who has owned 12 F-body V8's, the Chevy Volt is genuinely cool.

MODS: I hope you don't delete this post. I meant no disrespect to Camaros or Camaro owners.