Small cars are DANGEROUS. We do not like tiny econo boxes. We like big comfortable vehicles.

Make those, and we will buy. Make tiny status symbol “Look at me I am saving the planet” deathboxes and we will NOT BUY THEM.

With the EPA’s ruling last week regarding CO2, the odds we will get an economy killing Cap & Trade tax shoved down our throats are significantly higher. How are we to fight back against this menace? One idea I had and shared with my GOP Congressman, John Boozman (Re-AR), was an amendment attached to the Waxman/Markey bill, if that’s the carbon tax vehicle of choice, requiring all businesses to add a separate line item on any bill or receipt that explicitly lists the amount of tax imposed from cap & trade. Cap & Trade is not much more than a European style VAT tax applied at every point of production and transportation and therefore should be transparent in prices. Since the Democrats are who they are they will of course oppose this idea because it exposes them, which naturally makes this a good idea. Congress should not be allowed to hide behind the companies that are forced to collect this tax on Congress’ behalf and then jump on the anti-business bandwagon when people take their anger out on their utilities, Big Oil, and everyone else with whom they do business. If this is the path we are being forced to take, let’s at least demand we know who’s doing the driving.

I love these automobile threads because I get to laugh at all the myths that get bandied about.

Both GM and Ford are very competitive outside of the United States. Until the global recession profits from foreign markets are what kept GM afloat. Both these companies would have been better off going out of business in the United States and re-incorporating in the Netherlands. Vehicles like the F-150 are for the North American market. They are not ROW vehicles where there is little demand for a big pickup truck for anything other then mounting a heavy machine gun on. The overseas pickup truck market is for compact and midsize trucks, not for heavy duty trucks that work on 1000+ acre farms and ranches.

American vehicles are quite durable and are more reliable then anything produced in Europe. Beyond Honda, Subaru and some Toyotas Japanese cars are no better then ours.

As far as the F-150 goes, good for the Wyoming rancher it it lasts that long, but if Ford and the other American car companies want to remain major players in the auto world, they should be able to compete at the global level, meaning that F-150’s should be bumping heads with Toyota pick-up trucks in Asia, Europe and so on.

As much as I enjoy watching Top Gear I find that the show excudes a kind of European snoppery that is undeserved. Any comments that the Brits might have about Amnerican cars should tempered by the fact that they destroyed their automobile industry 40 years ago. It wasn ‘t just the government takeover that dit it. The Brits built lousy cars for decades before that.

Some of their test are pretty stupid. This Prius/BMW challenge is nonsense. The Prius was designed pretty much for urban driving. If you drive one like Al Gore’s druggie son of course you are going to get crappy gas mileage. So what?

A British gentleman farmer may find the F-150 unappealing and “piece of crap” (consider the source) but the Wyoming rancher finds a F-150, the RAM and Silverardo meets his needs for 20 year before he has to get another one.

Why not allow Americans to drill in the USofA and this will pretty much reduce imports. After all, china is drill 50 miles off of Key West, FL and pumping oil that they will be happy to sell us, while we are not allowed to drill there.

As to all this green house gas business, what are they smoking, the ones that put out this propaganda and those that buy into it. CO2 is a gas that plants need to live, they inturn produce oxygen which we need to live. Ahh, smart humans, lets eliminate CO2.

By the time obama gets done taxing and spending none of this will matter.

They sometimes test American cars and generally they have not been very kind. For example they tested a high end version of Ford F-150 one time and introduced it as the best selling vehicle in the world, a “business phenomenon” — but only in the North American market. The question was why nobody else was buying them. At first he teased that a pickup truck would not be practical in an effete English countryside before coming what he felt was the real reason: “It’s rubbish.” He then ranted on about how poorly made and designed it was, and implied that it was the worst vehicle he ever tested. Even in a more recent episode where they took a Dodge Challenger SRT8, a Cadillac CTS-V, and a Corvette ZR1 on a road trip from San Francisco to the Bonneville Salt Flats (where they filmed some of the most engaging car-related sequences ever shown on TV). They all ended up liking their cars a lot overall, but…while it wasn’t emphasized, they were not too thrilled with, again, the build quality, and these were top line, expensive American vehicles, especially the Corvette and the Cadillac.

When I’m in Europe, I see a wide, wide variety of sensible, well thought out cars for people want their cars to be practical and fun. Coming home I see a lot, LOT less variety and many if not most of those are impractical, silly vehicles bought by people not too up to speed on difficult concepts like “handling” and who instead seem a bit overly concerned about winning head collisions with smaller vehicles (and judging from what I see on highways, if they are to worry about stuff like that, they may well want focus more on which vehicles are the most comfortable when rolled over on the side of the road.)

I wish the liberal progressives would shut up about what car I should drive. Let the market dictate what gets produced.

There are reasons why it is smart to buy American. Too many people can’t think past their (little) situation to invest in America, for it’s own good. Buy American is more important today than ever before.

My politeness to drivers includes any big 3 auto maker without Obama campaign stickers on their car. Any two way-tie at a 4 way stop goes to the more expensive American made car…my Lincoln waits for NO camry.