Guest Post by Eric Peters
Do you know why SUVs became so popular?
It wasn’t because of their, er, sportiness. Or even their utility. It was because they provided a way to get the size (especially under the hood) that American buyers wanted but which the government was doing its damndest to deny them via fuel efficiency mandates.
The story goes like this:
In the mid-late 1970s, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE, in government-ese) standards began to bite down. Government bureaucrats and politicians, in their usual secular Puritan we-know-best way, decided – then decreed – that new cars – generally – weren’t “efficient” enough.
It wasn’t that there weren’t numerous high-mileage cars available on the market for people who valued fuel economy more than other attributes (size, power, etc.). Granted, they were mostly imports – models like the VW Beetle and Honda Civic, Datsun B210, etc. But the point stands: Fuel-efficient cars were available.
The problem – from the government’s viewpoint – was that not enough of them were being made.
Or, bought.
The bureaucrats and politicians felt that all cars should be more “efficient” and ordered it be so – regardless of market wants and needs. And regardless of the destruction and distortions this might impose on the car industry.
CAFE was enacted.
