commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

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... of Automobiles

Jan 19/05: Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic (progressive fool Herbert Croly's scary invention) took a wrong turn into the Detroit Automobile Show and sadly landed in print with sack and ashes to bewail and moan over cars, horses, speed, and consumer choice:

Hold Your Horsepower
The cheerleaders, I mean automotive press, have departed, and over the weekend the annual North American International Automotive Show was opened to the public. You can gawk here at the flashy cars on display; detailed reporting on the event can be found here at The Detroit News auto show site [no link in the article: here it is]. The theme of this year's cars was more: more power, more gizmos, more weight, more cost, even more safety features. But at this point what we need from cars is less.

You got that straight?

But at this point what we need from cars is less

Less is more in Easterbrook's dream world of Starbucks serfs, that magical place where small is tall, medium is grand, and large is a twenty something or other. Yeah, yeah, yeah... War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength:

what we need from cars is less

Easterbrook has had it with too much. Today's cars are enticing our children to motor suicide, he says, tricking them into unwanted, ghastly results of the right foot lightly resting upon a scarily powerful machine. Then, of course, these big engines needlessly pollute our skies, deplete the earth. All that for, oh dear, "styling." Translation: you, dear consumer, ought get what you do not want.

Now, I'm not one of those historians who find nothing pretty in the present tense, who sees but glory past. My faith in history comes of the good in it applied forward. Niccolò Machiavelli, William Howard Taft and I are of a mind on this, what we may loosely call first principles. Although Niccolò never got to ride in an automobile, he'd have loved it, for the Motor Age is of the spirit and glee of the Italian Renaissance. After all, Niccolò's fellow Florentine, Leonardo, imagined self-propelled vehicles and flying machines. Those whacked out, 16th century maniac geniuses would have loved a good ride at great speed no less than did Mr. Taft (here for stories of the Motoring President). But not Easterbrook. His kind of fun stops in 1984 in a Dodge Caravan.

The height of style and technology for him was Raymond Loewy's '63 Studebaker Avanti, the '71 BMW 2002, and the ''84 Dodge Caravan. Mankind's highest desires, apparently, were neatly satisfied by an egg-shaped forerunner to the Pacer (Try me: '63 Avanti like a Pacer? Say it ain't so!), an egg-shaped descendant of the station wagon, and a BMW that struggled a brutish 11.3 seconds to sixty miles an hour, presaging, it would appear, BMWs latest in the Mini.

Shit.

Back in 1971, but a few years after Studebaker fell to anemia and not enough horsepower (really, the "Lark"?), this nine year old pawed Motor Trend and Popular Mechanics for anything, any mention of any thing -- especially anything Porsche (that's pronounced, "por-shee") that snapped the head in seven or fewer ticks to sixty and under thirteen across the quarter mile. A car wasn't a car if it didn't impress on the flat out. I loved nothing but. And those dreamy numbers of 1971 are today nothing. Yet here is Easterbrook celebrating that the average horsepower of cars in the U.S. in 1975 was 136. He admits that the pathetic crunch to a 99 hp average in 1982 "isn't enough," but oh, no! he says, how can it be that today the average is 184 hp for cars, and 235 for SUVs and trucks, averaging out at 210 hp for all new vehicles. "Somebody heeelp me!"

That somebody, of course, is the Government. If Easterbrook has his way, Santa's gonna slip coal into the stockings of all those bad little boys and girls who've been playing with all those big bad horses. Away with a third of 'em, he demands, or we'll take it from you, anyway.

There is so much wrong in Easterbrook's raving fantasies. For a good and angry reply or two, or a hundred, see this FreeRepublic.com thread on it, in which I, a.k.a. "Nicollo" (the misspelled Niccolò) spelled out my objections. My first reaction, helped by a glass of whiskey, was to call Easterbrook a pussy (post no. 43). Descriptive, I maintain, although admittedly short on detail. As others on that thread pointed out, Easterbrook ignores the role of Government in causing greater engine inefficiencies with environmental rules (btw, leaded gasoline was endorsed and assisted by the government -- see Jamie Kitman's, The Secret History of Lead). I would add to the complaint the sad history of the Government's creation of the SUV itself, a story Easterbrook entirely ignores all the why demanding that the Government kill it. The Guvment having condemned the American passenger car to lesser forms and horses with EPA, CAFE, and NHSTA rules, Detroit got smart and disguised its "trucks" -- a category less strangled by said regulations -- as cars, thus the SUV. Of course, Easterbrook's complaint is that the SUV doesn't count towards CAFE limits, and he would beat it with the regulatory stick rather than free the passenger car of the same maltreatment.

Worst of all, however, is Easterbrook's horribly misguided, and outright false claim that Government has a right and a duty to regulate horsepower:

Do you think there's a "right" to horsepower? Puh-leeze. Perhaps you've got a right to horsepower for vehicles used exclusively on private property. Cars and SUVs are driven on public roads, and courts have consistently held that government can regulate vehicles for public safety and for public-interest issues such as pollution reduction and petroleum savings. You don't have any "right" to test a rocket engine in the street or drive a bulldozer on the highway, because such things imperil public safety. High horsepower, which imperils public safety, needs to be regulated.

"Pussy" comes comes first to mind. Then "nanny." Then, "liar."

The courts have ruled no such thing, Mr. Easterbrook. In fact, from the beginning the courts have distinctly held that police powers over road use belong to the States, and not to the national Government. (Sure, the States could regulate horsepower on their own roads but not its manufacture and sale, as Easterbrook wants.) When the Feds get involved, the excuse is that old, over-stretched Commerce Clause, not public safety, or whatever other excuse the Easterbrooks of the world conjure for not just telling us what to do, buy, and drive, but by force majeure, making us. Here's how The Law justifies itself:

House Rpt.105-477 - NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 1998
CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY STATEMENT
Pursuant to clause 2(l)(4) of rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee finds that the Constitutional authority for this legislation is provided in Article I, section 8, clause 3, which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.

Easterbrook then falls to greater dementia over an encounter not far from my house with some cell-phone bound, SUV speeding suburbanite demoness whose horses, he claims, are beyond her control:

The big "more" of the auto show is more horsepower. Eighteen models on display at the show boasted 500 horsepower or more. And these aren't race cars, but rather models intended for the street. Five-hundred horsepower is not only obscene but antisocial: Such power is useful only for drag-racing, cutting off other drivers, and speeds well beyond 100 miles per hour. The other day I was motoring down the wonderfully named Democracy Boulevard in Montgomery County, Maryland, doing 50 miles per hour in a 35 zone. A middle-aged woman yakking on her cell phone blew past me at perhaps 75 miles per hour in a shiny new BMW 545i, which has 330 horsepower. Driving 75 miles per hour on a suburban street with pedestrian crosswalks and bus stops is socially irresponsible. But in a high-horsepower car, all you need to do is tap the throttle pedal for an instant and you're at 75. The more horsepower, the easier it is to drive like a maniac.

Yes, Easterbrook was speeding, too. But beyond that, I drive this road all the time, and I drove it the other day to test this scenario. It's ridiculous, top to bottom. The limit is not 35 except for part of the road in which doing 75 much less 50 is near impossible because of constant traffic and traffic lights. And if that woman got to 75, it was only for the briefest of moments. So full this road is of cell-phone yakkers who carelessly waste precious horsepower one couldn't drive 75 but for a second before rear-ending some 545i, or Dodge Caravan.

For a cure from Easterbrook's nonsense, I prescribe my essay from a few years back on wasted horses:

Underachievers
 

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