Let’s Pay Detroit To Bring Their Gas Sipping Cars Home To The U.S.A.
Who hasn’t been enraged to read about how Ford and G.M. can make perfectly good little gas sippers in Europe, but just can’t bring themselves to make a fuel efficient car for us back home?
Well, now that they need some funding from us, here’s an idea. Let’s fund Detroit just to set up their efficient European car factories — back here, where they are really needed. Let’s get some better gas mileage out of their money troubles.
Apparently, it only costs $75 million to completely retool a plant, to produce an efficient little car instead of the gas-guzzling behemoth they were fobbing off on us fools all these years.
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Detroit needs money, and we need efficient vehicles. Let’s make a deal: We taxpayers will provide the funding to retool their factories to build just the specific models that are in the Common Good. We’ll fund retooling to build any models that help solve the climate crisis by getting better than 50 mpg, right now. It’s a win-win.
To make it super quick and easy, let’s forgo NHTSA crash tests on their current European models that already we would die for. After all, that EU is such a nanny state, right, and these gas sippers already passed fussy ECE rules to meet European requirements. Surely those sissy foreign crash-tests are good enough for us back here in the wild wild west: let’s accept their foreign rules. Some hardy soul here has demonstrated that small light fuel efficient cars are actually safe enough.
Our NHTSA crash-testing requirements have kept fuel efficient imports out for decades. And not just fuel efficient foreign cars. Even our own “foreign” cars.
It’s time to just tear down that wall. This would be a quick and easy way to reduce our heavy carbon footprint. Allowing ECE rules could be achieved with a quick stroke of the legislative pen once our first real working majority finally moves in next January. Then all we’d have to do, fellow-funders, is decide which models to fund first to finish fossil fuels fast.
Me? I’d go for any old Ka that gets 56 mpg.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Back when Ford said the festiva diesel was not cost effcient, I asked why don’t we (US GOVT) build a small engine diesel plant that all 3 could get thier engies from. They could make good profit since the engines could be sold to them at cost or with very little profit. If they can build thier own plant faster better cheaper, let em. This idea that America will not pay for fuel effcient cars is old thinking. I would pay upmore for a car that got in the high 30s to low 40s vs low 30 mid 30 mpg. The payback in savings over sevveral years will make up the difference and it si betterfor the environment.
Why would anybody believe that the congress that can’t run it’s own lunch room can run an industry? Especially a complex and danger fraught industry like automobile manufacturing is beyond me.
Drop the protectionist rules like the NHTSA, EPA, CARB, and DOT. Publish the independent crash test results, independent pollution production tests results and the independent MPG test results and let the FREE people decide what they are willing to pay for.
The “finally working majority” is so beholden to the unions and the environmentalists that they are never going to be able to implement a working solution with out imposition of a police state, and we have great examples of how they work in Cuba, Russia, and China.
How did socialism get such a bad name? Do you not realize that most of northern Europe is socialists? They seem to live pretty good lives. When was the last time you heard about poverty in northern Europe. Norway and many European countries are socialists and they are far more environmentally friendly than us.
I am a transplant from Europe. it has amazed me that these automakers have been producing very efficient cars for years. When the price of gas in the UK topped $12 a gallon this summer it seemed incredible that the general US market was not aware of these cars. If you are worried about safety watch the Top Gear show excerpt where they run a smart car into solid concrete at 70 mph. then compare it to a Toyota Corolla same speed same concrete. Both survivable and amazing for the size of the cars. Also look for the Audi A2 Diesel 124mpg no available in the US. why?
to Joe B.,
Socialism has a bad name in the US because it is not feasible on such a large scale. All the Euro countries that are socialists have relatively small populations. Also have to look at the historic makeup of the US and it is plain to see we are a country of capitalists and I for one am glad. The US leads the world in most scientific studies, with some Japanese(also ultra capitalists) exceptions. This is because we allow people to work towards their own ends and not state first. I for one do not want socialized medicine because it would seriously degrade the quality of care we receive. If you don’t believe that go to a VA hospital some time.
Better to tell the American car companies to go to hell where they belong, then to fund them to do what was right all along.
It’s time these greedy bastards got kicked in the teeth, it deserves them right. And the arguments that this will “hurt America” are total bullshit, we’re already in trouble, jobs being lost and so on. No point in making it worse by bailing out what doesn’t work.
I drove a used 1968 VW Beetle from 1977 to 1980. It got better than 30 MPG on the freeway. The car was cheap to buy and easy to maintain. But you cannot buy a car like that anymore. It wouldn’t pass all the regulations required for safety and emissions monitoring and so on. If you get run over by an idiot arguing on her cell phone while she drives her Canyonero with one hand, it’s game over man. Game over.
Besides, when Congress bails out the Big 3 they don’t care about consumers or automakers. All they’re really doing is bailing out the big unions. The ones where a forklift driver makes twice what a teacher does.
I for one will never purchase a car with gas mileage as my primary concern. We have the energy and the means to use it cleanly. We simply refuse to do it. I will happily drive my safe, reliable, OnStar equipped, 19mpg GM SUV for the forseeable future.
The Ford Ka is built for smaller European roads where everyone drives tiny cars. It would be a death trap to drive in the U.S. And don’t get me started about clean diesels. Our government taxes the fuel so it makes no economic sense to sell them here.
Personally? I think both union forklift drivers and union teachers are overpaid, given the shitty products they produce - i.e., crappy cars, and the posters and most of the commenters on this blog.
While we all would like more fuel efficient vehicles, just saying “give us the same cars you build for Europe” isn’t going to make Detroit profitable. The US is very different than Europe. We drive much more, and farther. Our population density is far lower.
I have to suggest that there is a huge disconnect between what Americans say they want and what they buy. My wife drives 50 miles each day to work. I worry about her safety in the winter especially. So she has an SUV. She is far safer than she would be in the typical European high gas mileage sedan.
You can neither dictate nor legislate what will be popular to buy.
I also note that whatever you make to sell, the costs of labor must be addressed.