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Market Trumps U.S. Congress When it Comes to Fuel Economy

Washington DC May 5, 2008; The AIADA newsletter reported that skyrocketing gas prices are driving historic shifts in the habits of car buyers, pushing them away from thirsty pickups and full-size SUVs and into four-cylinder compact cars, but today's car dealers aren't surprised.

According to the column in the Detroit News today, Daniel Howes asks; "...might all the smart people behind tougher federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules be watching? If they are, do they understand what we are witnessing? Namely, this: It's not arbitrary mileage goals, mostly unhinged from engineering reality and focused on a handful of companies, that are dramatically changing the behavior of the driving public. It's the price of fuel, stupid."

Cars outsold trucks in April for the first time in a generation, according to industry figures compiled by Autodata Corp., and four-cylinder powered cars outsold those with six cylinders under the hood.

The shift, clearly a blow to truck-dependent Detroit automakers scrambling to dig out of their deep hole, is confirmation that market forces are a swifter disciplinarian than the collective wisdom of Congress, career bureaucrats and the environmental lobby.

If the presumed national goal is to reduce consumption by getting more Americans behind the wheel of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, don't the past few months pretty much show that higher gas prices are the fastest way to get there? Um, yeah.

Gas prices trumps policy. For more on this article CLICK HERE.