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Monday, May 05, 2008 --- 80 days ago http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/current-affairs/44463-market-trumps-congress-wh
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Daniel Howes
*Market trumps Congress when it comes to fuel economy*
News flash: Skyrocketing gas prices are driving historic shifts in the habits of car buyers, pushing them away from thirsty pickups and full-size SUVs and into four-cylinder compacts.
What a surprise.
Might all the smart people behind tougher federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules be watching? If they are, do they understand what we are witnessing? Namely, this: It's not arbitrary mileage goals, mostly unhinged from engineering reality and focused on a handful of companies, that are dramatically changing the behavior of the driving public. It's the price of fuel, stupid.
Cars outsold trucks in April for the first time in a generation, according to industry figures compiled by Autodata Corp., and four-cylinder powered cars outsold those with six cylinders under the hood. The shift, clearly a blow to truck-dependent Detroit automakers scrambling to dig out of their deep hole, is confirmation that market forces are a swifter disciplinarian than the collective wisdom of Congress, career bureaucrats and the environmental lobby.
"It's easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here," George Pipas, Ford Motor Co.'s chief sales analyst, told the New York Times.
*Politics pursues easy path*
Which ought to say something to the lemmings -- including presidential contenders John McCa ... |
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