In an op/ed piece dated September 10th, 2014 on the eco-focused website CleanTechnica.com, Canadian author Stephen Grinwis purports to explain why he sold his Camaro and bought a Smart Fortwo Electric Drive (or, rather unfortunately, “Smart ED” for short). He says the ED is more fun, doesn’t eat at his conscience, is more economical, and attracts more attention.

Fair enough, if that’s true. If an electric car makes sense for someone, then far be it for us to criticize their decision to own one – not everybody has to like the same things. But in his defense (defence? How do they spell it in Canada, anyway?) of the switch, he makes some odd assertions.

“I’m not going to lie. I loved my Camaro at first,” Grinwis says. “It was fast. It was loud. It was beautiful. It was the embodiment of the North American automotive enthusiast’s dreams. I’d always wanted a muscle car from the time I was little. I’d been sold a dream come true, and for a while, all was well.” Based on the photo posted with the article, that muscle car was a 5th gen Camaro RS – note that we’re talking about the 312-323 horsepower V6 car, not the V8 LS3/L99 SS. Probably not what most of us think of when we picture a 5th Gen, but honestly a better performer than almost every previous generation’s V8 models.

Per the Chevy Canada website, the 2014 V6 Camaro has a highway fuel consumption rating of just 6.6 litres of regular gas per 100 kilometres, whatever that means. Chevy claims a combined 20 MPG city/highway for the V6 Camaro on their US website, so in the world of “muscle cars,” it’s pretty frugal. But according to Grinwis, it was a budget-buster.

Running the Numbers

“As I detailed my finances, I discovered the horrible truth: I’d managed to literally burn through $550 in gas that month. I was only supposed to be going through $150,” he claims. A quick glance at GasBuddy.com reveals current Canadian prices for regular ranging from $1.17-$1.39 a litre, which, once you figure out the conversion to gallons and the exchange rate, works out to $4.03-$4.79 per gallon. While this is certainly more expensive than US gas prices, doing the math says that to spend $550, he would have filled the Camaro’s 19 gallon/71 litre tank 5.57 times that month, even if he was paying at the top end of the Canadian price range for regular.

I’m calling BS on that. Up until very recently, I was making a 112 mile a day round trip commute, 5 days a week, in a 2004 V6 Mustang (before you get mad about that, would you wear out a car you actually liked by putting all those miles on it? Didn’t think so. Project Y2k is my “real” car.) That commute cost me about $450 a month in gas, at an average price of $3.85 a gallon. Oh, and I actually have it documented. Barring somebody siphoning his tank, I just don’t find the $550 believable.

Grinwis also bemoans the expense of tire replacement, citing that flooring it at a stop light causes worries about “the 1000 km of tire life you just took off your set of $3,000 max-performance summer tires.” While replacement PZero’s are indeed more than $700 each at Canadian Tire, I’m not sure how fast starts take a thousand clicks off the life of the front tires too, unless there’s some AWD Canadian Camaro I’m not aware of. Grinwis says that keeping track of his opportunities to “unleash the beast” amounted to only twice a week anyway, so it’s hard to see how this could be an economic factor in any case.

Once the horrors of Camaro ownership are laid out, he explains that the Smart ED is more fun because he can floor it at every light, without worrying about wearing out mechanical parts like the transmission and clutch. With just 71 horsepower and an 11.5 second 0-60 time, using the ED’s accelerator pedal like a light switch is probably a necessity anyway, if you don’t want to get collected by the cars coming behind you.

Inexpensive, Until It Isn’t

As for his conscience, Grinwis says, “When I drove the Camaro, it always bothered me that I was ripping through all this fuel, with no further justification than that I enjoyed it.” Unleashing the beast twice a week, according to his careful journaling. Sure, the ED is economical to operate, coming in at a claimed $1.02 a day in electricity costs for his commute, but his statement that, “Maintenance on this thing is cheap,” will probably last just as long as the 17.6 kW·h lithium-ion battery does – it carries a four year/80,000 km warranty, but at an estimated $20k to replace, you might as well throw the car out when the battery stops taking a charge.

Finally, there’s the issue of attracting attention. “During the entire time I owned the Camaro, not a single person came up to talk to me about the car, not a single person stopped me at a gas station, or rolled down a window at a light. The Smart on the other hand gets loads of attention.” ProTip, Steve: Nobody wanted to talk about your Camaro because it’s a stock V6. People want to talk about your Smart because it’s weird and ugly.

“I recently did a road trip, and stopped at a charging station on the side of the road,” Grinwis adds. “I had people pulling off the highway to come talk to me! This was the attention that I was supposed to get from the muscle car, coming instead in the form of the eco-curious asking about my little Smart.”

They were worried you were stuck there, Steve. Per Smart’s Canadian website, “A range of 138 km can be achieved.” That’s a little less than 86 miles, or the same ‘best case scenario’ range that V6 Camaro had with less than three gallons of gas in the tank. A road trip in any sense of the term in a Smart ED is just masochism – Drive for an hour and a half, charge for 3.5 hours (or 16, if you can’t find a 230V charging station), continue on your way.

“I thought that I’d dislike the perceived step down to a diminutive electric car… the reality is that the fun, the cost, and the attention have made the car a joy to own.” Grinwis concludes. Strange that he’d gone into the purchase with such a negative preconception, considering his website bio: “Stephen Grinwis is an EV evangelist, and general automotive enthusiast. His engineering background means he tends to nerd out a bit on the numbers. He focuses primarily on battery technology, wind power, and electric vehicles. If you can’t find him running the numbers, or writing, you might find him lifting weights somewhere!”

Preaching to the Choir

We get that this article is written to appeal to a particular readership, who want to hear a bedtime story about a car enthusiast who prefers the rainbows-and-unicorns Smart ED over the expensive, dirty, immoral Camaro. It would be just as disingenuous, though, if I wrote an article here talking about how great it was that I sold my electric car and bought a Camaro.

Electric cars have a place in the wide world of enthusiast vehicles, but if they’re ever to become truly mainstream choices for car buyers, they’ll have to stand on their own, real merits, rather than being compared to some straw-man muscle car with dubious facts and figures.