by Eric Peters

February 16, 2023 - To get some idea of what we’ve lost, it’s instructive to consider what we never had.

For example, the ’96 Toyota Hilux Surf, a friend of my old college buddy’s son bought recently. You have probably never heard of the Hilux - even though you have probably heard of the 4Runner.

They are both the same thing, except for one very important difference.

The Hilux Surf is powered by a 3.0-liter diesel engine and is capable of better than 40-miles-per-gallon. This is about twice the mileage you’d get out of a 4Runner, which was only available - in the Fascist Police States of Amerika - with a gas engine.

You might ask, why? - given the pretended governmental obsession with high fuel economy uber alles, the foundational justification for the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) regime. Well, because it is just that.

Pretended.

Or rather, it is the excuse.

CAFE - as it is known in acronym-speak - has been around since the 1970s, when the federal government first got into the weird business of dictating to the car industry how much fuel the vehicles built for sale could use - on the assumption that the people who bought vehicles could not direct the course of that via their dollars.

How it is that the government - how is it that the regulatory apparat - acquired this power is itself an interesting question as well as a weird thing, as there is nothing in the Constitution endowing the federal government with the power to decree how many miles-per-gallon the cars people buy must get; which companies that build cars are punished for not building, via fines that act as the “incentive” to not build them, in spite of people wanting to buy them. Viz, the soon-to-be-cancelled Dodge Charger/Challenger and Chrysler 300, all of which sell well but which use “too much” gas for the government’s liking.

Never mind.

The Constitution has proved to be as much a restraint upon the exercise of power by the federal government as Face Diapers “stop the spread”.

It’s not as if there weren’t any fuel-efficient cars available before CAFE - before the federal government began to insist that all cars (and trucks and SUVs) be fuel-efficient. There were all kinds of cars - as well as trucks and SUVs - and people were free to choose the kind that best met their needs.

Imagine that.

Some of them were designed chiefly to be economical to operate, the best example of which may be the original VW Beetle. It was not conjured into existence by federal regulations - and the necessity of complying with them. Rather, it was built to meet the market demand for a simple, efficient, and inexpensive car. It was one of the most popular - that is, one of the best-selling - cars ever made.

It was not the only car of its type, either.

The problem, insofar as the government viewed (and still views) it was that there were other kinds of cars - and trucks and SUVs - that emphasized other virtues and people were free to choose them, if they met different needs. You could, for example, buy a large sedan with room for six and a big V8 engine. Maybe it only got 12 miles to the gallon, but no one was forced to buy such a car - and those that did paid for every gallon, freely and (usually) happily.

Why else buy such a car?

Especially when you could buy a different kind of car.

The point was never to rescue car buyers from the evil machinations of the insolent car industry, which was supposedly canoodling in bed with the oil industry. The ridiculous implication being that car buyers had no choice; that they were compelled to hand over their dollars for whatever the car companies forced them to buy.

Of course, what we have now is precisely that - in reverse. That is, we have the government forcing the car companies to build the kinds of cars most people do not want but which the government is doing its darndest to force them to buy, that most of them cannot afford to buy.

Electric cars, for instance.

All of them are expensive and inefficient, precisely because the incentive isn’t to make them efficient and inexpensive.

It is to make them “compliant”.

The government has also succeeded in keeping from these shores, other kinds of cars - and trucks and SUVs - that lots of people would almost certainly want to buy - but which most of them aren’t even aware exist. Including sub-$10,000 electric cars available elsewhere, and models that are extremely fuel-efficient, like the diesel-powered (and 40 miles-per-gallon) Hilux Surf just purchased by my friend’s son’s high school buddy.

Hopefully, he will not be Hut! Hut! Hutted! for having the effrontery to buy what could not legally be sold here, at least by Toyota.

He was able to buy it privately, from someone who managed to get it here while Sauron slept.