american empire

[leo9]

Building the smaller, cheaper, more fuel-efficient cars you might prefer them to build was economically a non-starter

So why did people keep buying them, in the face of everything the advertisers could do to convince them that it was still 1950 and mileage didn't matter?

but the higher margins on SUVs made them viable, indeed the lifeline which kept the Big Three going until very recently.

Those higher margins were only there because, by pretending they were pickup trucks, SUVs could dodge the mandatory fuel efficiency rules. The only reason the class was created was so they could go on sticking big low-comression engines into them.

For that matter, you'll find the foreign manufacturers make them too - not because they're in on the evil conspiracy to use mind-control rays to make people endure those big luxury vehicles they don't really want, but because they were what people did want.

So if nobody really wanted those little fuel-efficient cars, why are the companies that made them surviving, while the companies that didn't, are waiting with their tin bowls in the Government free money line? Is the AUW some kind of eco-terrorist front that only targeted SUV makers?