A funny thing happened at the LA Auto Show. I ran into a bunch of folks from various OEMs that had spent the last few months in Washington DC lobbying against higher CAFE standards. The lone exception was Honda. Yeah, they had people bribing lobbying Congress, but the Honda folks were asking for higher CAFE standards. And sure, Honda is poised to benefit big time from a 35 mpg corporate average. Even including Acura they have no rear-wheel drive vehicles (though a new NSX would change that... Update: and I totally forgot about the S2000). Plus they got the Fit, hybrids, new clean-diesel technology and of course the hydrogen powered Clarity. Mr. Honda was fond of saying that an engineer is lucky when he encounters a problem, because he then gets to solve it. As such, we present today's winning Commenter.
Hardigree popped open a worm can when he reported that President Bush — who has previously admitted that we are addicted to foreign oil — is probably going to to veto 35 mpg standards. This led Electoral College Dropout to muse:
Just like the catalytic converter would kill the auto industry, just like the seat belt was going to kill the auto industry, just like the air bag was going to kill the auto industry, just like...
If raising fuel economy to the levels of every other industrial nation is going to kill off the American auto industry maybe they should have been dead years ago.
We'll end it by asking, "What Would Soichiro Honda Do?"