Grump, the EPA and CAFE have been trying to mandate restrictive laws on cars since 1973, and look where we're at now. We still are free to drive whatever kind of car we want, whether gas-guzzling SUV, or Hybrid Honda (even if they are idiotic, and we should be looking toward diesels if we really were interested in fuel economy and the environment) But, due to a very strong auto industry lobby, the EPA will always be pretty much a paper tiger, since Congress knows all too well which side their bread is buttered on. They have had some victories (catalytic converters), but were the EPA and CAFE really as powerful as is portrayed, it wouldn't even be possible to buy a Chevy Suburban that gets 11mpg, or to have them reclassified so that they don't hurt the corporate fuel economy ratings of FORD, GM, or Chrysler.
What we should be focusing on are more important things, like pushing car companies to domestically source more components, instead of simply looking for the cheapest sources, or forcing domestic suppliers to accept mandatory 5% pay decreases yearly (eventually forcing suppliers to move to overseas manufacturing locations anyhow) Currently, American automotive manufacturers (and Harley Davidson) are forcing domestic suppliers to outsource manufacturing to third world countries to keep up with cost pressures from the Big 3 at an ever-increasing rate. I can foresee the very real possibility that in 3 years my plant (with 1500 people) will be closed, not because the quality is poor, but because we cannot compete with Mexicans or Chinese, which is basically what we MUST do, in order to keep our plant here. THIS is the fight we need to be fighting, because if we don't start fighting it, none of us will be able to afford the helmets that the goverment might be mandating, because we will have had to sell our bikes just to feed our families. And this isn't something the Japanese have done to us, in fact, ironically, our Japanese customers seem more interested in keeping the manufacturing of their suppliers here in the states than do our domestic customers. We are under cost pressure from Toyota, Nissan, and the others, but that is not their overriding consideration, quality is. When we talk of going to Mexico because of cost considerations we get a lot of pushback from the Japanese transplants, the big 3 hardly blink an eye and could care less. Why is it that the Japanese car companies care more about American jobs, than American companies? That is where our focus needs to be, we are selling our country out from under ourselves.
