commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

More entries: see Index

... of Automobiles

Feb 5/05: More on Easterbrook and too many horses... (see entries Jan 28 and Jan/19):

Last week's New York Times Sunday "Automobiles" section ran with this Easterbrook-damning headline, I Could've Had a V-8! (the headline writers must have been reading my entry of Dec 28...), a review of the Audi S4 and the Mercedes-Benz C55 AMG, both eights and heavy on the horses, 340 and 362 H.P., and both to sixty in under six  seconds. While observing,

Each has much more power than one could possibly need on an American road.

writer Peter Passell concludes,

It is a rare enthusiast who doesn't appreciate a throaty handbuilt V-8 engine, and a rarer one yet who would turn down some additional torque and horsepower. But as impressive as these pricey little rockets are, a driver may come away feeling that while something has been gained, a bit has been lost. Whereas the previous six-cylinder versions felt superbly balanced, with almost perfect integration of powertrain and chassis, the heavier V-8 cars gain brute force at the expense of some finesse.

Perhaps this is what horsepower-hungry tuner-car buyers want. If you are among them, you can't go wrong with either the S4 or the C55 - provided that price is no object and you perceive performance capabilities as a status symbol.

Too much power, yeah, whatever. People want it, and what's wrong with that? Where Passell appreciates horsepower's siren, if with some wonder, Easterbrook would have the Federal Government take it away, like it or not. (Note here that Passell is an automotive writer, a species Easterbrook condemns as "Cheerleaders" for the industry; see Jan/19 entry).

When a government regulates citizen choice, citizen preferences, the requisite must be clear -- and overwhelmingly large. First up, of course, is deference to fundamental law. Then comes the public will. Congress excuses its safety rules under the Commerce Clause and justifies them with highway casualty statistics. States would have no constitutional impediment to regulation, and would be guided by the public demand.  Either way, no government should decide for something the people do not want. (I did not say what the people "need".) If they do, it had better be for damned good reasons, damned overwhelming reasons.

We don't go throwing out legislators over of seat belt tension standards. But what Easterbrook demands is of a wholesale consequence, far beyond the preferences of those lucky few who can afford a C55. Call it the trickle-down theory of horsepower: take away the C55's, take away by Federal mandate the Eights, the Tens and the larger Sixes, and you will force both consumer and factory into an unnatural state of distinction, where large is small, small is large, and nobody gets what they really want, for they are to want what is given them and not what they think they might want.

It'd be a great way to kill an industry, and if you don't believe me, go look at the 1970s, that era celebrated by Easterbrook for its horsepower anemia (see below). In the 1970s the people got what they were supposed to want, and not what they wanted. The Japanese makes didn't succeed because Detroit insisted on building larger cars. The Japanese raided America through a hole in the market of the Government's creation, not Detroit's. Forced to make that smaller it didn't know how and that its customers didn't want, the U.S. industry got beat up trying to play a game it didn't know against a competitor for whom small was its very strength. Ever since, the automotive business has been all about making larger, not smaller, more horses, more features, more space. Today small cars are a fraction of the market, and will remain so unless the Government makes it change. People just don't want 'em.

Uh oh. Just as The New York Times wonders, as at the end of Passell's article, "Can cars be musclebound" (likely to show in tomorrow's Automobiles section), we get this announcement yesterday from that great importer of Yugoslavian monster cars:

Malcolm Bricklin to Release First Set of Pictures of Chery Factory, Cars and Working Sessions From Recent Trip to China

Easterbrook? Easterbrook? You hiding in that press release somewhere?

Maybe these "Chery" cars are better and cheaper than the Chinese-market Chevrolet "Spark" that the Chery company has blatantly ripped off from GM, and maybe it'll sell here, too.. No, no, no! ...not this again. We're talking about this Malcolm Bricklin:

Yugo importer now wants to bring Chinese cars to USA

Do we want more small cars, or are we gonna be made to buy them? Ask your Congressman.
 

Here for previous entry
More entries: see index