>>>The order kneecaps the American auto industry in the two areas where it clearly has a competitive advantage over Japan and Europe: trucks and muscle cars. The bestselling American-made car in America isn't a car at all. It's a truck, the Ford F150. It gets, under the best of conditions, 19 miles to the gallon. Under Obama's plan, the industry standard for trucks will be 30 miles to the gallon. Is there a place for the Ford F150 in that world? There may be a truck called a Ford F150 in 2016, but other than its name what attributes would it share with the current model? Ditto for the Ford Mustang. The brand "Mustang" is too popular to jettison. One shudders to think what weak engine will lay beneath the 2016 Mustang shell.
Consumers will have less choice. An anonymous White House official, perhaps an emigre from Oceana, tried to pooh-pooh the notion that the fuel efficiency and pollution standards will run some cars off the road: "Consumers can retain choice but for more fuel-efficient cars." Translation? "Sir, would you like that Prius in red or blue?" Big Brother will be following you into the auto dealer's showroom. "Don't even think about that Cadillac Escalade. Take you eyes off the Camaro. A Chevy Volt suits you. Buy it. Now."
The observation that automakers approved of this usurpation of their decision-making abilities is one of the more comically absurd notions advanced among the major media outlets. Barack Obama is their boss. He fired the head of General Motors two months ago and ordered Chrysler to merge with Fiat. Of course the good company men of Detroit realize the real shot callers of Motor City reside 500 miles to the southeast. Just how nefarious the automotive bailout was really wasn't fully understood until yesterday. When you take the king's shilling, you do the king's bidding.
If Americans really wanted to trade cheaper, more sturdy automobiles for more expensive, flimsier ones that got better gas mileage, then hybrids would be the leading models. But the inconvenient truth for the Obama administration is that the bestselling American car for seventeen of the last eighteen years has been a hulking truck. Some Americans want hybrids, and they can buy them under the free system that more or less prevails. More Americans don't want hybrids, and they will have a tougher time buying trucks, sports cars, and station wagons under the program of force adopted yesterday by the Obama administration. Above all else, the scheme hatched by the Obama administration is a rebellion against the freedom of the marketplace and an embrace of the authoritarianism of force.
Flynn Files (22 May 2009)
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