In short, fuel economy is the new black... and a kill-joy for lovers of GM, Ford, Chrysler V8s. It's a shame the makers of exotic machinery are exempt, however...

 

I think the exemption should be based on the model. 2000 Vipers a year should have no restrictions.

This is another reason why a gas tax would be better than CAFE. It would be great if GM or /& Ford started lobbying for a $1 a gallon gas tax phased in over say 5 years.

 

I'd be OK with GM making Corvette it's own brand. I wonder if they'd be able to get an exemption that way?

 

It's not about brands within GM where the exemption would be applied. That would mean another company would have to buy Corvette from GM!

 

The thing is that Viper wouldn't be a brand it would be a separate company. If GM were to do this then it would have to sell or spin off Corvette.

 

Well it certainly makes sense that is the reason California set the bar at 50,000 units per year. What a load of bullsh*t.

 

Lutz is making excuses for GM's inability to spend money. I want someone to show me math that demonstrates why 5-10K specialty vehicles each year somehow makes any sort of a dent in CAFE. It's a drop in the bucket.

 

And what's Chrysler's excuse to sell off Viper?

 

Fixed that for you.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, entirely. It's more the line... "GM's inability to spend money..." that I query. If that were the case, why did GM conceive the ZR1, I ask?

Why don't we just kill the American performance cars and just hand the market over to the exotic manufacturers... for crying out loud?

 

What Lutz is saying is that ANY negative is going to be bad, aka. they aren't on path to meet the target and may have to take extreme measures to do so. Sure they could limit the number of corvettes they make, but then they are still putting research etc. into them and it becomes not worth the investment.

 

If they sell 10000 vehicles at 10mpg under the standard, then they need to sell 100000 at 1mpg above the standard.

The conventional wisdom for years has been that the market will not demand enough higher mileage vehicles to meet these standards, thus forcing a company to sell them at a loss.

There's also the issue that the Corvette shares powertrains with high volume vehicles. If those can't be built any more, then the Corvette not only has to shoulder increasing economy beyond what the market demands, but it also has to shoulder V8 development.

I'm far from having enough info to quantify whether Lutz's statement is pure politics or whether there is some actual internal analysis to backup what he says. But I would not be surprised to find out it was more than just politics or excuses.

 

We already have high enough gas taxes and they should dump CAFE and let the market decide., which it already is. And dont give me that crap about what other countrys pay in taxes. I dont live there for a reason. It would NOT be great if Ford and GM lobbied for a tax.

 

The point of CAFE and gas tax is to cut consumption nationally. CAFE doesn't work. I'd rather have a V8 Camaro and $4 gasoline than $3 gas and no V8 Camaro. Higher gas prices work as shown by June-Aug 2008 Auto sales.

Ford and GM would benefit from the gas tax over CAFE by #1 not having someone tell them what they can't build, #2 being able to sell more global products in North America thus giving us better cars and reducing development costs.

 

I think it's pretty clear that all automakers need to be very careful of how the meet CAFE. I'm sure GM and all the other automakers are capping the number of high performance vehicles they have in their fleets in the next 10 years - there's only so much they can offset with high mileage vehicles.

And if GM has decided on a fleet-cap for performance cars, they will certainly want to reserve some of those for Corvettes, and that might mean no Z/28. From Lutz's comments, it sounds like Z/28 is dead for sure.

While I understand the business end of all of this, I think overall this country has become too driven by fear and oppression in the name of the "greater good". CAFE doesn't work, but most people don't realize it and don't fight it because on the surface good mileage is a good thing. But the ends don't justify the means, and when people realize they're all driving high mileage, egg-shaped deathtraps it will be too late. For me that translates to buying a v8 RS SS