Car dealers lobbyists rally to protect SUV owners
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The 2008 Lincoln Mark LT truck comes with two front seat cigar lighters, leather seats, a compass, chrome bumpers and a 30 gallon gas tank. It gets an estimated 12 miles per gallon in the city. Now I understand why this V8 engine beheamouth of a vehicle goes only three miles an hour in my urban parking ramp. It could run out of gas at any moment! It's also difficult to maneuver a creature that large around a corner designed for a Honda Civic. Normally, I don't spend much time thinking about cars. But these take up two parking spaces; they are impossible to see around, and there's that wee gas mileage issue.
I ran across a site maintained by the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association. Donttakemytruck.com is maintained to let truck drivers know that stricter regulations have been proposed to limit the sale of trucks and SUVs. A few Minnesota legislators want to adopt California's Low Emission Vehicle Program. The program requires that all fleet vehicles
meet stricter fuel standards earlier than the federal government has required--by 2010. For car makers like Ford that have relied heavily on truck sales, that means they might have to sell fewer trucks to meet the overall fuel efficiency standards. California says by 2010 smog-emissions in L.A. will be reduced by 57 tons per day.
Other states have already implemented these standards: Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
Donttakemytruck.com not only wants to prevent Minnesota from adopting these standards, they also suggest that trucks are "99% more efficient that they were in the 1970s," and that trucks are not a major contributor to global warming.
That doesn't jive with research at the Oakridge National Laboratory: "According to the E.P.A's 2000 Fuel Economy Guide, a new Dodge
But please, don't take my truck.
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