By Bob Balderston

Bob Balderston

A “cash for clunkers” provision of the recent federal stimulus package was trimmed out at the last moment, thanks in part to efforts by SEMA and other enthusiasts’ advocacy groups. This time around, the familiar scrappage program was aimed at stimulating consumer activity by urging Americans to buy more new vehicles while disposing of their older but serviceable ones. One version of the proposal would have allocated $16 billion to provide cash rebates to owners of older cars and trucks who agreed to have their vehicles crushed. Where the plan ran into a hitch was at the financing end of things: the banks aren’t lending money to many seeking new-car loans, particularly the lower-income demographic targeted by the latest crushing crusade.  More…

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In case you were concerned that the beleaguered SUV and truck market doesn’t have enough to worry about right now, here’s a curveball: the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is advocating new regs that would bring truck, SUV, and van bumpers down to the level of regular passenger cars. It might make for some funny-looking new SUV’s, and would certainly take a bite out of the larger vehicles’ ground clearance, one of their few remaining selling points. But it kind of makes sense: I’m sure it’s no fun getting your radiator mashed into your engine, or all your rear lights smashed out, in the course of some minor collision with an SUV or truck simply because its bumper isn’t the same height as yours. And the insurance companies aren’t thrilled about the higher payouts that result from such accidents, either. What do you think? Should new bumper rules be imposed on new trucks and SUV’s, or should the insurance companies (i.e., everyone who pays into a car insurance plan) just suck it up?

Source: Kicking Tires.

Thanks to overpopulation, and some motorists’ inability to treat cyclists and pedestrians courteously, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be exiling all vehicle traffic from a 7-mile stretch of some of Manhattan’s busiest thoroughfares for three Saturdays this August. The "Summer Streets" experiment, during which a chunk of Manhattan (including the iconic Park Avenue) will be open only to cyclists and pedestrians, will likely involve a lot of the obnoxious, folksy, litter-bugging activities that tend to occur when the appropriate amount of car traffic isn’t present to keep these groups in check. It seems to me that you’d already have it pretty bad if you’re a car enthusiast in Manhattan, what with garage space costing as much as some apartments do elsewhere, and the antics of Bloomberg, who seems determined to take NYC down the same car-hating path as London. But if you can’t even drive your own car on the roads that your taxes build them for, what’s even the point? I’ve driven in Manhattan and don’t find it half as bad as some places I’ve been, like the diabolical car trap that is Chicago. But this sure makes me glad I don’t live there.

Not Canada! Come on, Canada? They’re supposed to be our civilizing influence to the north, that kind neighbor who politely knocks on our door with a smile when we’re partying too loud at 3 am. But now, they’re getting into the scuzzy business of senseless vehicle scrappage, all in the misguided name of environmental salvation. John Baird, the bureaucrat Canada’s put in charge of the environment, is expected to propose a $90 million windfall in federal handouts for scappage outfits with names like Bye Bye Beaters and Car Heaven, who are smacking their chops in anticipation of growing in power and ramping up their efforts to destroy our automotive heritage. Further outrage after the jump…

There are a number of problems here. First of all, vehicle scrappage does very little to save the earth. The average car produces an obscene amount pollution during its manufacture and its disposal—by some estimates, at least much as it does during a whole lifetime of driving—so wrecking serviceable cars for the sake of cranking out new ones is wasteful and counterproductive. Second, older cars tend to be some of the best-maintained cars on the road (why do you think they’ve been around so long?) and aren’t generally the emissions-belching monsters that people make them out to be (there’s a term for that: it’s "scapegoating"). Third, vehicle scrappage is politically motivated and is very lucrative for certain special interests. Why incentivize car owners to dispose of their perfectly good, running vehicles just for the sake of simply producing more? Tellingly, the program will offer rebates on a new car for anyone willing to relinquish their faithful beater to the crusher. It amounts to a free economic-stimulus package for dealerships and automakers, one that’s paid for by taxpayers–and by old cars. Canada, don’t do it! If you fall, who’s supposed to be our bastion of civilization?

More at CTV.

Frankly, we can’t exactly blame California for having some of the strictest emissions laws in the country—when your major cities are that obscenely overpopulated, you kind of have to. But now, the Golden State is going after cars built prior to 1976, which have historically been exempt from its strict emissions testing, largely because these cars didn’t yet have much in the way of modern emission-control equipment—it wouldn’t make any sense to test them using today’s standards. Polluters though they might be, here’s why even these antiquated hulks don’t spew out as much smog as a modern commuter car: they represent only a tiny sliver of the automotive population, and they’re almost never daily drivers—how many people do you know who drive a ’59 Cadillac to work, anyway? We’re talking about cars that are more than three decades old, that are largely gas-guzzling V8s, and are likely as not to have personality tics, such as a low tolerance for idling in traffic for extended periods. In other words, no one in their right mind would use them for everyday driving; these are the pampered rides that are saved for car shows and sunny-day cruisin’, and over the course of a year they probably put out less total C02 than a Corolla. The proposed legislation, which would impose emissions tests that pre-’76 cars would be unable to pass, simply amounts to another way to persecute enthusiasts over their infrequently-driven hobby cars. And the Hot Rod Blog makes the point that legislation that first gains traction in California rarely stays in California—you don’t need to look much further back than the national smoking ban to prove that.

Of course this is by no means the first time that Cali has pushed car-unfriendly legislation, and lawmakers probably think that the current climate of anxiety about gas prices and pollution will make the public more prone to scapegoating older cars. Wanna prove ‘em wrong? Express your opposition to S.B. 1549 to the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee through the SEMA site.

Via TTAC

Kentucky state Representative C.B. Embry Jr. has introduced a bill that would make Corvette the official state car, in honor of Chevrolet’s Corvette plant in Bowling Green. However, he’s been frustrated for the last two months by the stalling of the bill, which the legislative committee has left simmering on the back burner in favor of "more pressing issues." Hey, what do they think the citizens of Kentucky are paying them for, anyway?

What state do you live in, and what do you think your official state car should be?

Washington State legislators are worried that skyrocketing gas prices are cutting into gas-tax revenues as drivers find ways to cut back on fuel consumption. So, like good little money-grubbing politicians, they’ve proposed a "MPG tax," based on a vehicle’s rated efficiency, that’d ding drivers regardless of how much gas they actually use. Under the proposed law, a Prius owner would be on the hook for $60 a year in taxes, while someone who drives an H3 would shell out $180. From this, I’d extrapolate that a ’68 big-block Chevelle that’s driven a few days a month in the summertime would get dinged 300 bucks or thereabouts, which hardly seems fair since it probably goes through less gas in a year than that daily-driven Prius. Multiple-car owners, you can bet, aren’t going to get charged based on their fleet’s combined mpg either, which would make sense when you consider that you can only drive one of your cars at a time.  Oh no, it’d be much more lucrative for the state to charge you for each car, which would mean I’d be paying more in fuel taxes for my little collection of infrequently-driven gas-sippers than a Superduty-driving yuppie who commutes daily in his behemoth from the suburbs to a downtown office. Fair, huh?  How’s your state doing with crazy fuel legislation—got anything similar on the books in your state?