The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner--who writes about cars when he's not trying to save America from the big spenders--worries that high performance automobiles likely are a thing of the past for the U.S. industry.  He writes:

It's only a matter of time now before "core products" can only mean "high mileage," "alternative fuels" and "zero emissions." The end times are on the horizon for the Corvette, Camaro, and high performance versions of the Cobalt, Colorado, Silverado, etc. etc. Get ready to say goodbye to Vipers and Shelby Mustanges, too.

Driving the point home is the LaHood Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax hint. The people calling the shots for Detroit now are all in Washington, and the most important of them aren't named "Timothy Geithner" nor are they working at the U.S. Treasury Department handing out TARP funds.

No, the people now deciding what kind of products will be made by Detroit are working in Congress, the U.S. Department of Transportation and, most crucially, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Virtually to a man, these people hate privately owned cars and the individual autonomy they symbolize.

This is, of course, yet another reason the unending government bail-outs are a disaster--they give politicians the leverage to impose their own ideological whims on a basic industry.  Unfortunately, we almost certainly are at the beginning rather than the end of this process, the veritable socialization of much of the economy.