The Happy Hypocrite: Why an EV Fanatic Bought One Last Gasoline Car
Why would the co-host of our EV podcast, “The InEVitable,” buy an ICE car?
First of all, yes, I am indeed a hypocrite. A big one. Second, I bought a new car. It’s a little blue hatchback, it’s got three cylinders, and it has the word Corolla in the name. OK, so I’ve left out the part that it makes 300 horsepower with the help of a skeezed-up turbocharger, it has AWD with driver-adjustable torque split, and its full name is 2024 Toyota GR Corolla Circuit Edition. You know, the one with the carbon-fiber roof? Yeah, buddy! It’s an outstanding performance car, one I personally ranked right behind the McLaren 765LT Spyder at last year’s Performance Vehicle of the Year event. The memory of chasing but not catching the little GR from inside a Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica is one I still can’t shake. So, I bought one. The big problem? It burns gasoline.
See, I like cars like the GR Corolla. This is the fourth rallyed-up hot hatch I’ve owned. Counting ’em down, we start with my gateway drug, a black 2002 Subaru WRX wagon. Then came a Subaru Rally Blue 2006 WRX wagon, and next was a Lava-colored 2015 Ford Fiesta ST. Funny story about that last one. My wife was just about to start law school, and while I loved the way our 2006 Hawkeye drove, that car’s reliability left everything to be desired. There was some unsolvable issue with the belt that connected the power steering pump to the alternator to the A/C compressor, and every light on the dash would illuminate at seemingly random intervals. Popping the hood would reveal a shredded belt sitting atop the intercooler. The wife needed a reliable car for the L.A. to O.C. commute she’d be undertaking a few times a week.
The plan was to get her into a BMW i3. Makes sense on paper, right? The i3 could go about 130 miles on a charge. Thing was, from our house to her school was almost 60 miles, so she’d have to fully charge it every night. My wife’s a brilliant, loving, amazing woman, but making sure gas tanks and batteries are full isn’t exactly one of her strong suits. Luckily, BMW did offer a range-extender option—a tiny 650cc I-2 that added about 50 additional miles. Yeah, that could work. Thing is, I’d driven the i3, and I hated it. About as far from the “ultimate driving machine” ethos as a product could veer. The purchase was set to happen in late 2014, and for whatever reason, the i3s with extenders were being held up at the port. Coincidently, I was working on one of MT’s de rigeuer “Best Things I Drove in 2014” lists. I’ll never forget writing out 1) Pagani Huayra 2) Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6x6 3) Ford Fiesta ST … I forgot all about the BMW, jumped in my car, drove straight to Galpin Ford in Van Nuys, and bought the Fiesta ST.
(Amusing aside: Ford was super upset about a negative review I’d written a couple of years earlier about the then-new fifth-generation Explorer. To the point that after I bought the Fiesta ST and posted about it on Facebook, a Ford PR person rang up my colleague Scott Evans to ask if I’d really, truly purchased a Ford. Scott confirmed that, yes, I did. To which the PR person responded, “But Jonny hates Ford!”)
Fast-forward nearly 10 years, and it’s déjà vu all over again. The GR Corolla is the best small sporty thing on the road, and I ordered one from Japan back in December 2023 because, as I hate boring car colors, I wanted the Circuit Edition–exclusive Flame Blue paint and apparently no dealer in the United States had any in stock. I figured it’s probably the last gasoline car I’ll ever buy new (and almost assuredly the last car with a manual transmission), so let’s put my money where my mouth is and just do it. Many people have been asking, why not the new Honda Civic Type R, as it’s about the same money as the GR Circuit Edition? Long story real short, I like the way the Toyota drives better.
Then on February 15 we had Emily Fischer on as a guest on The InEVitable podcast. She’s a professor and a climate scientist, and she confirmed, spelled out, and underlined what I already suspected and mostly knew. Carbon dioxide emissions from passenger cars are the single biggest threat to Earth’s ability to support life as we know it. And my Toyota would be arriving in a month. Goddamn it.
Well, I began to think, is there an EV alternative? BMW never did a second-generation i3, and while there’s an i4, I didn’t want to spend more than $50K. Therein lies the rub. As of the first half of 2024, there just aren’t any EVs that do what the GR Corolla does. And I’m not even talking about weight. For instance, the Kia EV6 GT is pretty dang good to drive, but it starts at $63K, nearly $17,000 more than the Toyota (and I still prefer the way the Toyota drives). Not that it’s widely available yet, but the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N starts at about $68K. A dual-motor Volvo EX30 (0–60 mph in 3.4 seconds!) would have done the trick for less than $46K, but that’s not on sale yet, either. Nor is the Rivian R3, which I would have totally bought if it were out yet. But it’s looking like 2027 before the tiny Riv goes on sale. Would I own two Rivians? Happily, especially the R3X, though I’m aware that one will cost well over $50,000. Let’s make that well over $60,000. Sigh. Plus, I totally love the GR Corolla.
My mind reeled back to May 2022. I attended the first Miami F1 race as a guest of Aston Martin and as such got to sit down and talk shop with four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel. He didn’t hold back his thoughts. “When you think that in 50 years' time, we won’t be able to sit here because it’s flooded," he said, acknowledging the fact that Miami is almost uniquely set to suffer as the planet warms, "and it’s not just going to impact some distant generation in the future, which will still be very unfair, but our children and the next generation. People ask why this is so important [to me], and I don’t understand the question. It should be important to everybody.” You tell ’em, Sebastian!
But the way I actually responded was to ask how he squares the fact that Miami was race number five out of 22 that season, and forget about how the F1 cars pollute on track, what about the traveling circus of CO2-belching semi-trucks, cargo planes, private jets, and big-ass ships that move all the Formula 1 people and their stuff around the globe? “We’re all hypocrites,” he replied. “I think we have a greater responsibility. I’m not the perfect example to some degree. We all are not, and that’s why we have to push." Amen, Sebastian. I’m also not the perfect example. But I can push. As for me, look, I can make all the excuses in the world—I’m not going to drive it much, so the GR won’t be producing that much CO2 being the big one—but at the end of the day, I’m part of the problem. Put another way, I’m taking one last hit off the (tail) pipe. Can you forgive me? Can our kids?
When I was just one-year-old and newly walking, I managed to paint a white racing stripe down the side of my father’s Datsun 280Z. It’s been downhill ever since then. Moral of the story? Painting the garage leads to petrolheads. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always had strong opinions about cars.
One day I realized that I should combine two of my biggest passions and see what happened. Turns out that some people liked what I had to say and within a few years Angus MacKenzie came calling. I regularly come to the realization that I have the best job in the entire world. My father is the one most responsible for my car obsession. While driving, he would never fail to regale me with tales of my grandfather’s 1950 Cadillac 60 Special and 1953 Buick Roadmaster. He’d also try to impart driving wisdom, explaining how the younger you learn to drive, the safer driver you’ll be. “I learned to drive when I was 12 and I’ve never been in an accident.” He also, at least once per month warned, “No matter how good you drive, someday, somewhere, a drunk’s going to come out of nowhere and plow into you.”
When I was very young my dad would strap my car seat into the front of his Datsun 280Z and we’d go flying around the hills above Malibu, near where I grew up. The same roads, in fact, that we now use for the majority of our comparison tests. I believe these weekend runs are part of the reason why I’ve never developed motion sickness, a trait that comes in handy when my “job” requires me to sit in the passenger seats for repeated hot laps of the Nurburgring. Outside of cars and writing, my great passions include beer — brewing and judging as well as tasting — and tournament poker. I also like collecting cactus, because they’re tough to kill. My amazing wife Amy is an actress here in Los Angeles and we have a wonderful son, Richard.Read More
