Ancient, at 14 years old? Give me a break. My daily driver is a yellow '77 MB 240D with 350K+ miles and have no intentions of getting anything newer until the parts become unavailable or too expensive.
Hence my reason for saying "In most people's minds." I don't think its that old, my self. And parts unavailability on a Mercedes? Hell will freeze over first. A friend of mine has a 170D, a 1951 I think, and he ordered parts through the dealer direct from Stuttgart. I don't think about them as too expensive, though. I think about the option of spending a few thousand a year repairing it versus spending about double that on average buying a new car and keeping it for 5 years- which is about all these modern pieces of junk are good for.
Could we please not use the word retarded as a synonym for stupid or dumb? For those of us with family members who actually are retarded, it is painful to see that term used to indicate choices and actions that we might be ecstatic if our loved ones could actually do them (even if enrivonmentally wasteful). People who are retarded are born that way and struggle to fit into a confusing world as best they can. I think GML is referring to people who have normal intelligence but make choices he considers thoughtless and short-sighted.
Not trying to be a nit-picker, just trying to point out that there are better and more effective words to get your point across.
I was born with a natural hatred for being pointlessly politically correct. My own mother tried to kick me of it, and she's failed. I doubt you'd do better.
I was also born with a wide variety of mental and physical handicaps. People have called me retarded over the years. I don't know why they think that, given that my IQ is in the top 2%, but whatever does it for them. Its never bothered me. Maybe when I was in kindergarten, but I think I was over it by then.
Furthermore, I have, as someone who enjoys history, seen that 200 years ago people operated with a great deal more common sense and innate intelligence than they do now. I think its because we have developed some weird ideas about not letting the weaker members of our society suffer the natural deselection that made us more intelligent than other forms of animals in the first place, but I digress. Compared to the greater common sense and more intelligent actions of people of times gone by, modern day man is retarded as such:
retarded |riˈtärdid|, adj.delayed, held back, or retrogressed in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment