If “car brained” means recognizing how great cars are for improving our lives, by letting us get to places quickly, then I don’t see anything cowardly or broken about it. Just seems rational.

I once read a claim that once you remove the distance that exists between places because of cars (large set-backs, unusable "green space", wide freeways including the medians and buffer around them, giant parking lots, et c.) cars are only an improvement for most car owners for day to day travel before a city adjusts to widespread car ownership, and adds all that stuff. Add in the time you spend working just to pay for the car (depreciation, fuel, insurance) and it's not a great deal at all. After that, it's only consistently a benefit if you can afford a driver. For most, it's a wash with bicycling, if not worse (in the hypothetical world that hadn't bloated way apart to account for tons of cars) except now you also need to schedule separate time to work out to stay healthy.

This seemed implausible, so I ran the numbers for my situation at the time that involved car costs and a commute distance that were both below median for my city, plus well above-median household income.

Sure enough! It worked out just the way they claimed, if only barely. For the median worker in my city though, it was very true.

If by "quickly" you mean reaching a far-away destination in much more time and with higher variance in arrival time than it would have taken if the origin and destination had been sensibly placed closer together, then sure.