That isn't what happened last time. Engine keep getting more powerful and efficient in the late 70's-80's. Same thing will happen again. Just in the last 10 years we have seen GM's top N/A V6 go from the 215HP 3.5L to the 304HP 3.6L all while becoming more fuel efficient. In the next 5 years we will see 350HP out of N/A V6's.

 

If an average 39 MPG fleet were so wanted by a free market of consumers, why would the government have to mandate them?

If high MPG cars were in great demand there would be many companies out there trying to fill the need. The fact is, there is little demand; further there are great costs associated with maintaining arbitrary MPG averages.

All these fascistic mandates and laws are considered good because of their "good" intentions. The means matter little to those who only care about the ends.

 

Not taking anything away from PP's usually insightful posts but given the fickle nature of politics in regards to the automobile... Jerry Flint has this to say:

 

For the record, I support the federal loans to GM and Chrysler. If the loans were enough to allow restructuring outside of BK - great. If not, I support the loans to finance a restructuring within BK. At any rate, the goal would be to create a healthy, profitable, privately held and operated company.

My issue is not the loans, my issue is using this crisis as an excuse to to expand government, do social engineering, pay back political supporters and essentially dictate which vehicles Americans can buy.

When the feds take complete ownership of GM next month, we'll see just how long it'll take for them to divest themselves from the company.
I hope that the answer to that is 'soon'. I hope that the dubious actions already taken by the government, don't scare away any needed potential investors.

 

What makes people think the Feds want to control GM forever?

Maybe there's a few GM fans out there in power that actually want to make GM self-sustainable in the long run.

Sure, there might be short term pain, but what's to say the Feds won't sell their stake in GM for good money, after they fix it?

 

What gets lost in all this is the simple fact that CAFE is an ineffective tool for attaining its intended goal.

What we must do (and soon) is change the fuel rather than the cars.

What is happening now is simply the predictable circle jerk of politicians attempting to use the same old approach that has failed in the past to cope with an even more grave reality now.

They will hide behind such craven tactics until they all collapse as absurd.

At that point it will be too late as we are still wasting our time attempting to regulate our way to a solution.

That has never worked and it never will.

 

The domestic automakers have been a lobbying roadblock to a lot of "pie in the sky", politically good looking legislation over the years. GM collapsing right now is the perfect storm because it allows the government to shrink GM (thus shrinking it's influence), and gain enough control to prevent them from being a road block.

Do you think a healthy GM would support these new even more agressive standards....when they had just began to plan for the then very agressive standards that were issued just last year.

With the domestic automakers on their knees and beholden to the government, the only companies that can lobby on behalf of the automarket are import makers...and they are not gonna make to big of a stink because they don't want to damage their green reputations, or have imports limited to protect domestic automakers.

 

Did you ever see that video where Saddam Hussein calls out the names of the people he believes to be political rivals, so that they can be executed? The rest of the representatives (now scared sh!tless), give Saddam a standing ovation, as their colleagues are being marched out to be shot.

I got a sense of that standing O., when GM issued press releases applauding the new CAFE and CO2 standards. Disturbing really.

 

the standards were always going to increase over the next ten years. an eventual goal of 35 mpg by 2020 was signed by Gorge W Bush. this now makes the goals permanent and clear.

as for the comment on the automakers, the alliance of automakers is in favor. if they were all weak kneed....well i'd say that's ridiculous...not one company would come out and say something against the standards...curiously they all agreed.

 

OK, but under the scenario you paint, you've either got a GM or you don't have a GM. Would you prefer a GM that's much leaner and setting the overall standard in fuel efficiency... if that is firmly what you believe the new entity will do?

There is nothing that leads me to believe the Feds will use GM to push certain agendas. I don't believe the Feds are serious about forcing companies to adopt virtually impossible fuel efficiency targets. As stakeholders, the Feds should be ideally positioned to know if the targets are realistically achievable. My feeling is that the existing technology isn't advanced enough to make the leap to the newer targets. Not unless stop/start technology already gets us there without doing anything more.

Simply, I think the Feds are in it to make a buck out of GM... eventually. Don't forget, 2016 is a couple of election terms away so the current administration won't necessarily set any mandates in stone.

 

The new standards are higher than the standards released last year.

as for the comment on the automakers, the alliance of automakers is in favor. if they were all weak kneed....well i'd say that's ridiculous...not one company would come out and say something against the standards...curiously they all agreed.[/QUOTE]

This is because the other option is to let the states set their own standards, which is rediculous.

I think these new standards will get create quick and dirty crap products...the in the same style as what GM made in the 70's and 80's that ruined their reputation for quality and innovation. GM is almost bankrupt..they don't have money to design basically anything new. If you think in 7 years, they will be able to double fuel economy, plus not drop the ball on the quality gains we have seen your insane.

The problem is....cars take what 4 years to design from idea to the road?

 

Z284ever, IF by next year G.M. is nationalised I will bow to your prescient wisdom. BUT, I don't believe it will happen, so you'll forgive me if I don't buy into "the sky is falling" argument. The way I see it, the gov't. managing G.M.'s BK is to try to prevent it's being liquidated. After all, how would they explain not getting the money back if they allowed G.M.'s creditors to rip the co. apart to recoup their own expenses. I guarantee you some Democratic seats would go Republican next couple of election cycles if they let that happen.

 

So be it. GM got themselves into this mess. As much as I love GM, I love my country MORE. Something's goofed up in your worldview when a total abandonment of one of its basic principles (economic freedom) is OK as long as your favorite car company doesn't fold.

And for that matter, I highly doubt GM would be no more. Without the Govt promise of loans last fall, the UAW would have made bigger concessions (see UAW v. Ford a few months ago). The UAW didn't have to budge because they knew the Govt would cover GM and therefore they didn't have to give up anything. Even a bankrupt GM would continue to operate, I just don't see, and never did, liquidation as a legitimate option.

Agreed, but Obama is capitalizing on this "crisis" to enact a wish list of leftist utopian statist agenda items the Fascists from Italy would be envious of. Same as the banking "crisis" lets him take over the banking industry and set wages for banks that didn't even take TARP money, or how the climate "crisis" will let him swoop in and wipe out our economy under the guise of saving the planet.

GM is just the latest victim of the "don't let a good crisis go to waste" mentality.

Back to the point of this thread....

The irony in all of this is that Charlie may finally get his smaller, lighter Camaro, though I would argue it may not be a Camaro in any way we know of today . I'd rather have the car die again and its history remain relatively untarnished (No Mustang II period for the Chevy ponycar) than for it to become a miata-sized underpowered green machine that nobody can afford to buy.

Let's just say for now that the SS is gone, and we stick with the 29mpg V6 car as the Only Camaro. Maybe the turbo 4 comes back online but for now lets say 100,000 V6 camaros are sold in a given year. With a 39mpg CAFE standard, you're going to have to sell 100,000 cars that get 49mpg to make up for it (or 200,000 that get 44mpg). The Volt might hit those numbers, sure but right now they are saying that car is going to sticker at $40,000.

For simplicity lets say these are the only two cars GM makes. Nobody's going to buy that car at that price when (while) they are still free to choose what to buy, they'd buy a vastly cheaper Camaro, because even $5/gal gas doesn't make up the difference in the monthly note on $10,000 more in financed sticker price.

So all the sudden GM is way off their target sales numbers in order to hit CAFE. What has to happen? Camaro production has to be capped or ended.

The high MPG cars are going to be so much more expensive that nobody's going to buy them if they have the CHOICE of a conventional car.

So for these companies to maintain their CAFE averages, there are either going to have to be huge arbitrary spikes in the prices of conventional cars, production limits, or both, or just end those models all together.

I've done a lot of gloom and doom here. I'd say one bright spot that buys a lot of cars a few years is to simply cut displacement. We've gotten so horsepower happy its absurd when an Accord has 250hp. Cut everything down by 33% and your average car would still have plenty of power but there'd be an almost immediate spike in CAFE from each brand.

 

Would you support disbanding the military since it is Socialized defense? Should we act as a country or are we just a giant group of "every man for him selves". I feel that at some point we have to work together to protect our sovereignty. GM was an important part in winning WWII, so was being an oil exporting nation. Giving away our heavy manufacturing and energy Independence makes us a weaker nation.

 

Cars might take that long to design but what I'm referring to is existing powertrain technology, which doesn't usually take as long as 4 years to introduce from the concept stage... unless I'm mistaken.

Let's get real here. We are not just talking about GM. It's every vehicle sold in the USA and every automaker. What breakthrough technology is available currently that will catapult existing cars to unprecedented fuel economy gains? The German car makers build cutting edge technology. Yet they haven't got anything in the pipeline (that I'm aware) that will radically increase the fuel economy of their cars unless stop/start technology, as introduced in the Mini, is a prelude to the next wave of fuel saving technology.