November 07, 2007
An inconvenient truth
You can always count on a politician to combine ignorance and arrogance -- with a dash of snark, just for good measure.
Hillary Clinton doesn't disappoint.
At a recent gathering of the Democratic pols pursuing the presidential nomination, the topic of the day was forcing American automakers to build cars that get better mileage.
Clinton demanded a 60 percent increase, pulling the number from where the sun don't shine.
Clinton, who has courted the UAW and met with domestic automaker CEOs, argued that engine technology has stagnated.
"Henry Ford would be dumbfounded until he opened the hood. Because he would recognize the internal combustion engine underneath. It is the same basic concept that he put in to the Model T almost a century ago. In fact, that Model T got better gas mileage than your typical SUV does today," Clinton said. "We can't continue this. It's time for a change."
Really?
Now, to be fair, Clinton really didn't pull that "Model T got better gas mileage than your typical SUV does today" line from the same funky place as the "60 percent." She got it from a repository of even less useful knowledge: The Sierra Club. National Review's Henry Payne checked with some people who might actually know something about the Model T.
The comment is revealing for the Left’s continued nostalgia for “the good ol’ days” of pre-modern America. It is also a convenient untruth.
Her misinformation apparently is sourced form those auto experts at the Sierra Club which claimed in a 2003 ad that the Model T got 25 mpg while the average SUV gets 18 mpg.Wrong, says Ford Motor: The typical Tin Lizzy got 15 mpg.
Furthermore, the Model T weighed just 1,200 pounds, lacked any safety equipment, and had a top speed of 45 mpg with a tailwind. Today’s SUVs weigh 4,200 pounds thanks in part to federally mandated bumpers, airbags, catalytic converters, roof-crush standards, side-impact steel bars, and so on – not to mention creature comforts like AC and heated leather seats.
When adjusted for all these amenities, a Ford SUV is 4.5 times as efficient as Henry Ford’s original.
And that's why complaints of a "do-nothing" Congress are so misguided. At least when they're doing nothing -- in most instances -- they're not screwing things up any worse.
There's an old saying in engineering circles that a camel is a horse designed by committee. Imagine what a car designed by Congress would be like.
As bad as the American automakers may be about misreading what the public wants, when it comes to fuel efficiency and technological innovation, they're much more qualified than pols to figure out what needs to be done to meet the ever-changing demands of the market.
The bottom line -- from an engineering perspective -- remains in the realm of hard science: physics, mass, acceleration.
Crash safety is affected by speed and weight. Lighter cars means more dead and injured. There's a tradeoff to be made in the pursuit of better gas mileage.
Ford was pilloried twenty years ago for the exploding Pinto debacle, a result of a cost-benefit analysis that led to weakened gas tanks -- and predictably terrible consequences.
What Congressional dolts like Clinton and environmental do-gooder groups like the Sierra Club don't seem to realized is that they're essentially forcing the same sort of safety compromise on the public. All things being equal, the only way to meet these draconian fuel-efficiency standards is to make cars lighter. And notwithstanding the tremendous strides made in automotive safety features, more Americans will die in collisions that would otherwise be survivable in larger, heavier vehicles.
So, what do you want to drive?
Would I mind getting better mileage? Of course not. But it depends on what I have to give up to get it.
And my family's safety is non-negotiable. Give up our safe, acceptably-fuel efficient vehicles to satisfy the idiotic demands of politicians who want to tell us how to live -- as they motor about in their ginormous black SUVs and fly on their donors' private jets?
I don't think so.
But I wouldn't mind seeing Hillary trade-in her broomstick for a Model T.
Posted by Mike Lief at November 7, 2007 07:10 AM
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