Informal survey

[jhetley]

I was contemplating the general castigation current on the auto industry, bemoaning "Detroit's" pig-headed management decision to concentrate on pickup truck and SUV production and letting Japan steal the small car market.  And then, as I walked to fetch the newspaper and back, I counted passing vehicles.

Over half the traffic on State Street consisted of light trucks and SUVs.  Usual carrying one person, the driver, and with no visible cargo.  Folks, "Detroit" was producing those dinosaurs because that was what the American Driver wanted to buy . . .

I'm old enough to remember small cars like the Nash Metropolitan, the Henry J, the Ford Falcon.  "Detroit" has tried to produce small, fuel-efficient cars through the decades.  They've flopped in the market.  Instead, we bought highway battleships like my family's 1957 Oldsmobile, with a big V-8 engine and automatic transmission. 

Or a Ford Expedition.  What percentage of SUVs ever leave the pavement, except in an accident?

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Which was exactly my point. If the barrage of SUV/truck advertising didn't work, the auto companies wouldn't do it. To a major extent, they created the market that demanded those vehicles, and they did so because the profit margins on those vehicles were higher. To then turn around and say "Detroit made those cars because that was what the American public wanted," is putting the cart before the horse. Detroit knew what they wanted to sell, so they put their marketing muscle behind it.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Offer most American buyers the choice between a big car and a small car, other things being equal, and they'll take the big car.

$4.00/gallon gasoline broke the "other things being equal" part, and now that price has dropped enough to screw up economic calculations all across the board. One reason why more efficient cars have been popular elsewhere is that European and Japanese drivers laughed at our screams on $4.00/gallon. They've been paying more for years.

If OPEC had wanted to screw alternative energy and fuel efficiency, they couldn't have chosen a better move.