bob's car blog

As a once great city lies in in ruins, brought to it's knees by corrupt liberal policies and government bureaucracy, we must ask ourselves "Has Detroit become the poster child for hope and change?"

Japan is now running its own stimulus plan designed, in the midst of a marketwide slump, to boost sales of fuel-efficient cars—and the rules shut out all U.S.-brand vehicles.

WARNING:GRAPHIC VIDEO CONTENT! On the surface, it appears that I (and I was not alone) was wrong about the "Cash For Clunkers" deal. I really didn't think that so many people actually had vehicles that would qualify. However, in the final analysis, will CFC be a boon to the economy, or is it just another political farce cooked up by the Democrats to win friends and influence people?

Well, it's official. "Cash For Clunkers" is now law—only it's not called that anymore. Now it goes by the tidy name of the "Car Allowance Rebate System," so that it could have the cutsey acronymn of CARS. I wonder how much our taxpayer money went to the Ad Agency hired to come upwith that.

The one thing I've come to learn about President Obama is that if he personally doesn't like something, he'll do whatever he must to make it go away. Cases in point: GM and Chrysler. Under the guise of keeping them both out of bankruptcy (Remember him saying, "GM is to big to go bankrupt"?) he walked them right up the steps to the courtroom.

Chalk one up for all those who opposed throwing barrels of cash at Chrysler and GM to stave off bankruptcy, they were right on the money last fall when they said the best thing to do is just let the companies quietly go through restructuring. “Why put off the inevitable?” they asked.

Well, the top news story today was Mr. Obama's BIG announcement that by his divine will, the US passenger vehicle fleet will average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil.

President Obama announced on thursday (4/30) that he has single handedly saved millions of American jobs by pressuring Chrysler to enter bankruptcy so that the decks could be swept clean for a merger with FIAT of Italy.

On monday it was announced that General Motors is in the "last ditch attempt" phase to stay afloat. Topping the list of current drastic measures is a relatively fast phase out of the Pontiac division (by 2010) and dropping roughly half of it's 6246 dealerships.

It's all about the money! Back in July of 2007, Republican Senator John Warner of Virgina asked then Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to calculate what speed would provide optimum gasoline efficiency under the technology of the day. In his request to Bodman, Warner cited studies that showed that (after it was imposed by Congress in 1974 because of the Arab oil embargo) the 55 MPH national speed limit saved 167-thousand barrels of oil a day. That speed limit was repealed in 1995. The letter read "one could assume that the amount of fuel that could be conserved today is far greater."