Government Motors On Display

This is one of the reasons I’ve bought my last American-made car.

The Detroit auto show, which opens to the public Saturday, normally kicks off with a splashy press preview of a new car model surrounded by scantily dressed models and introduced by one of the Big Three CEOs. This year is a bit different. The show, officially named the North American International Auto Show, started with a speech by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. And rather than introduce a new car, LaHood applauded the car companies’ early efforts to meet new and tougher fuel-economy standards championed by the administration—35.5 miles per gallon overall in their fleets by 2016.

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Domestic automakers “have to worry about what the government wants, and the government clearly wants these types of vehicles,” says John Wolkonowicz, automotive analyst for IHS Global Insight. “This is a different kind of show with a different kind of focus,” adds Gerald C. Meyers, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. He says there is an indirect influence from both the government and Congress on auto designers and engineers to produce environmentally friendly cars. “Regulators are talking to companies, and companies are responding to regulators,” he says. And there is a faction in Congress that believes that since two of the companies are owned by taxpayers, they need to “behave in a way that’s favorable to the environmental movement,” Meyers says.

Sorry, but I want to buy from a company that is designing cars that their customers want - not what some bureaucrat in Washington wants.  Right now, nobody in Detroit appears to be interested in what Americans actually want to drive.