The Orange Car Guy

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Some people are single issue voters; if a candidate is in line with them on guns, for instance, they’ll support that candidate even if on other topics they’re as far apart as a Chevette and a Corvette.

This brings us to Trump.

If you care about cars, he’s your guy. He may not be a Car Guy, per se – but he’s the only guy who isn’t an obvious enemy of Car Guys.

Like his predecessor, for instance.

Barack Obama – after his anointed successor  lost the election – had his regulatory apparat fatwa a near-doubling of federal mandatory minimum gas mileage requirements (CAFE) out of pure spite, to punish the filthy deplorables who didn’t elect her – and who continued to express their lack of interest in high-mileage-uber-alles cars by not buying the ones which were – and still are – available.

Like the Toyota Prius hybrid, for instance.

Great gas mileage – but not much fun. Can’t do much with it – other than get good gas mileage. Many people want more than that.

So it’s not that high-mileage vehicles like the Prius aren’t being offered because the car companies want to deny Americans high-mileage cars in favor of “gas guzzlers” – the lie behind the CAFE reg.

The truth is people just aren’t buying them much. . . because they’re not much fun and can’t do very much, besides get good gas mileage. A Prius can’t tow . . . anything. It doesn’t go off-road or get to 60 in five seconds or even eight.

Toyota sells about 1,500 Priuii per month. Ford sells about 60,000 F-150 trucks per month.

Not a typo.

The purpose of nearly doubling the CAFE fatwa from about 35 MPG to nearly 50 MPG – and in just five years’ time; the fatwa goes into effect in 2025 – wasn’t to make the industry produce cars that get great gas mileage; the industry already does.

It was to regulate out of existence the ones that don’t – which are the cars most Americans (and all American Car Guys) are very much interested in buying despite their not averaging 50 MPG.

It’s exactly as if the government spewed a fatwa tripling the cost of cheeseburgers to “nudge” people toward soy burgers.

No outright ban on large cars, V8 SUVs and pick-ups. Too obvious – and much too clumsy. People might object such a direct approach. The coercive utopians are far more clever than they used to be.

So couch an effective ban in terms of “increased gas mileage” – What could be the harm? Doesn’t everyone want increased gas mileage”? Nevermind that it’s not possible – absent Mr. Fusion – for a big car, V8 SUV or pick-up to average even 30 MPG without being radically downsized, de-powered or otherwise gimped and becoming something very much like  . . . a Prius.

But just in case, add to the mix a confusing but effective guilt-trip: The fatwa would also “lower vehicle exhaust emissions” – and who could possibly oppose that? That’s how it’s been presented by the complicit – or derelict – media.

Of course, the “emissions” are not the ones most people associate with that word – i.e., the things which create smog and make it harder to breath. Instead, carbon dioxide – a non-reactive gas (and less than 1 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, of which the tiniest fraction is “emitted” by human-made stuff like cars) that was never described as an “emission” until about five years ago, when it become politically necessary to do so because the emissions of things that do cause smog and respiratory problems – and so were actual problems – had been almost completely eliminated from vehicle exhaust.

This was a problem because it eliminated the justification for the War on Cars (and Driving) which non-Car Guys like Obama and the ugsome squad of pending claimants to the throne very much wanted to ramp up, not dial back down.

Cars – and driving them, when it’s us doing it – are disliked by people like Obama because they run counter to the control of everything that is their heart’s most fervent desire – although this is always couched in oily euphemisms about “discussions” and “communities” and other such politcial brummagemisms.

It’s insufferable. Makes one want to – as Mencken once put it – raise the Jolly Roger and slit throats.

You and I aren’t part of the “discussion” – the terms of which (and so the outcome) have already been decided. The “community” means those elitists like Obama, who just bought a $14 million dollar compound adjacent to the Kennedy compound – how big is this joint’s “carbon footprint”? – who regard those not in their “community” as the help, at best.

But no outright ban.

It would still be perfectly legal to build them – even if they didn’t average close to 50 MPG, as demanded by the federal fatwa.

Just prohibitively expensive – because of a tripling of the fines imposed on them for “noncompliance.”

Also fatwa’d by the Car-Hater who preceded the Orange Man.

Which would result in what was wanted – a de facto ban on the kinds of cars that Car Guys like by making them too expensive to build, except in small handfuls for very rich people . . . like Barack Obama.

Well, the Orange Man is fighting this.

He did what none of the other tools on the stage back in 2016 would have: He rescinded the fatwa tripling the fines that would have applied to “compliant” cars – that is, cars that didn’t average close to 50 MPG by 2025 – thereby kicking the teeth out of the 50 MPG fatwa.

He also has been trying to prevent the 50 MPG federal fatwa from remaining in effect – outraging the Car Haters, which ought to earn him points with anyone who hates them.

He has “denied” the imminence of apocalyptic “climate change.” You can still hear the keening this triggered.

The latest news is he’s using anti-trust laws to go after the four car companies who seem to also hate cars – Ford, Honda, VW and BMW – who are in league with the Car Haters in California, who want both fatwas to remain in force. These four agreed to “voluntarily” impose the fatwas upon on themselves – even if the federal ones are repealed.

Why would companies that build cars “voluntarily” hairshirt themselves this way? It’s not because they’re “concerned” about either gas mileage or carbon dioxide “emissions.” Set that nonsense aside. It’s for consumption by idiot children, including those well past puberty.

It’s not hairshirting. It’s rent-seeking.

These four see their future earnings coming not from selling people cars but selling them rides. Ideally, in a government-mandated automated electric car that will be crushed very four years. See here if you dinna believe me. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

It is far more profitable to rent one car to scores of people every month than it is to collect a single car payment from one person every month. And to throw away – and replace – cars every four years, like a no-longer-supported smartphone – than for people to own cars for years after they paid them off.

Do you begin to see?

And the Orange Man has been fighting all of this.

He may not be a Car Guy, but he is without question the best friend anyone who gives a damn about cars and driving has had in the White House since Calvin Coolidge (a most under-rated president).

He deserves the support, therefore, of everyone who still gives a damn about cars and driving and the freedom (such as remains) embodied by both, which is on the knife’s edge of being taken away for good.

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