Saturday, January 27, 2007

Lexus parallel parking

I always wondered about about the new Lexus that self parallel parks. Having lived for three years in a city apartment with no off street parking I perfected the skill of parallel parking in a spot only inches larger than my four door Honda Civic. I thought it was a sham so when I read the NY Times article by Calvin Trillin I was redeemed.

"Then I got behind the wheel and we set out to find a beautiful spot. Well, not exactly a beautiful spot. A spot that is worthy of that name — a truly satisfying spot, a spot good enough to spin yarns about in bars where parkers gather — requires some skill to get into. The Advanced Parking Guidance System works only if the spot is six and a half feet longer than the car — the sort of spot, in other words, that the average Manhattan parker comes upon about once every 14 or 15 years. The only parker who might need help from a guidance system to get into such a spot is a parker who is driving himself home from rotator cuff surgery. For Lexus to offer a self-parking system for a spot that size is the equivalent of some high-end kitchen-equipment manufacturer offering a self-carving system that only works on meatloaf."

via kottke

Now I am in L.A. and I am so happy I have a place to park my car. Though the lot is so small I spent the first 3 months scraping the side of my car against the house trying to manuever out of the driveway. Its 2007, still no flying cars.

2 comments:

Amy said...

I'm scared of your parking spot.

Anonymous said...

Good to see my parallel parking abilities aren't obsolete. Hope all is well on the opposite coast, I'm in Orlando at a convention. Send me an invite for Netflix, I'll show off my equally poor movie list, interspersed with quality films that I move to the back of the line.
Love,
Dave