It Has Finally Happened: Thanks to BoingBoing, I've learned that IKEA is selling prefab houses in the Scandanavian countries and the UK. Think about how many hex bolts must come in that box! (No, you can't go down to your local IKEA and strap one to the top of your car; middlemen are involved.) Given the things that people will do at the opening of a new IKEA store, if the BoKlok concept comes to the States, how many innocent hipsters will be killed in the crush at the model homes' first preview weekend?
[Except for their communal aspect -- all BoKlok homes seem to be built as multiplexes -- many of the pictures on the BoKlok site remind me of the Glidehouse that premiered to great acclaim in Sunset magazine last year. I'll bet that IKEA does the whole thing for a lot cheaper ...]
Materialism Where I Drive: We'd been making plans to buy (or at least get on the waiting list for) a new Toyota Prius after the first of the year. But now I look at the pictures of the 2006 Honda Civic hybrid, coming out next month, and I'm tempted. I think it looks nicer -- in comparison to the lines of the Prius, there's more car, less boy-wonder. The MSRP of a Civic with all of the geegaws will likely be several thousand dollars less than that of a comparably-equipped Prius. But the Civic is smaller -- statistics say that the Prius has more cargo space than even my current Ford Contour; the Civic doesn't have a split rear seat, because batteries make up the back wall of the trunk. And the likelihood of paying MSRP and not being faced with an onerous wait list seems remote. We'll see -- in the meantime, hopefully gas prices will dip down just enough, for just long enough, for the multitudes to decide that they don't need to buy hybrids anymore, thus allowing us to swoop in. (Here's one detailed review of the 2006 Honda Civic hybrid.)
Posted by Kevin at September 13, 2005 12:29 AM