Keep those small cars off the road

The rusting hulk of Myron Ebell rolled up to the Detroit Auto show last week to argue that America and its car industry should keep charging down the same old hole like there is no tomorrow.



He said:

Uh, and I think you can see from the Detroit Auto Show that for the media there are lots of little green cars, and for the public who want to buy cars there are lots of muscle cars and pickup trucks.

And I think if you look at the new CAFE standards you're going to see that in 2016 the average car will be the smart car which is not selling -- there was an article in the Post yesterday that Mercedes Benz was in terrible trouble with the smart car because nobody wants to buy it. But that will be the average car. Many people will have to be satisfied with smaller cars than I saw in the Detroit Auto Show yesterday.

There are now many many concept cars that are even smaller that no one wants to buy.

From the Washington Post article:

"It's very difficult for Smart to duplicate the success of Mini," said Rebecca Lindland, director of auto research at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. "The primary characteristic of Smart is that it's small. The primary characteristic of Mini is that it's irresistibly adorable, with performance thrown in."

The ForTwo, at 8 feet 10 inches, is more than three feet shorter than the Mini. Some Americans are reluctant to buy minicars because they are overshadowed on the road by massive pickups and sport-utility vehicles.

"The car is just so tiny in the U.S.," Lindland said. "I had a Mini and there were friends of mine who were afraid to drive with me."

America has a lot of very very deep problems. Myron and his friends are doing everything they can to make sure they keep them.

Meanwhile, over on the CEI blog Myron Ebell was thanked for helping with this post where they correctly blamed the Fed for the housing bubble (although the CEI thought it was great at the time) and lectured the government "to get out of the way of the productive sector" -- without whose bailout there would not have been any Detroit Auto show this year anyway.