Smart Cars for Thee, but Not for Me!

Sep 22

Cars, Global Warming/Climate Change, Politics

Why does the Obama administration hate cars? Is this antagonism toward personal vehicles just another attempt to turn America into Europe, where tiny cars clog tiny streets, and gasoline costs much more than it does in the U.S.? Or is it a case of “smart cars for thee, but not for me”, where only the ruling class will get to keep their motorcades of a dozen armor-plated Chevrolet Suburbans?

The car you want

Last month, the EPA proposed a change to the decades-old fuel mileage stickers found on all new cars. One of the ideas being subjected to public comment is a rating statement which gives actual letter grades to various types of cars, based on their estimated MPG and also their exhaust emissions. Pure electric cars would get an “A” grade, while hybrids or flex fuel vehicles would get a “B”. Full-size SUV’s and high-horsepower performance cars get a “D”.

While it is very nice of the government to offer helpful suggestions of what type of car is best to buy, the car-shopping public has already voted with its wallet. The gargantuan Ford Expedition and luxurious Lincoln Navigator saw huge sales increases in an otherwise dismal August auto sales report (WardAuto.com, September 1, 2010). Also, the top two best-selling vehicles in America continued to be full-size pickup trucks from Ford and Chevrolet (The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2010).

The car they want you to have

Meanwhile, on the hypocrite front, word came from Detroit that the Reverend Jesse Jackson had his super-sized Cadillac Escalade stolen and stripped- while he was attending a green jobs seminar! As someone once said, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s just like when Al Gore has to cancel a global warming speech due to a snowstorm.

Finally, we learned from Obama’s erstwhile car czar Steven Rattner that the President, frustrated with the effort to bailout GM and Chrysler (and the UAW), allegedly said, “why can’t they just make a Corolla?” Um, Mr. President, GM did build a Corolla- it was called the Chevrolet Nova in the 1980’s, and it was built at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California. The plant was a joint venture between GM and Toyota that operated for over 20 years, until first GM and then Toyota pulled out this year.

There are many reasons why “they” can’t build a small car to compete with Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and others. Inflated union wages are one, but mostly, it is over-regulation of the marketplace that prevents U.S. manufacturers from profitably building and selling subcompacts. One would think that the head of the most “progressive” (regulation-happy) administration in history would know about that, and thus would not have to ask the question.