The Speed of Darkness

Oh, if only we could return to the heady days of ought three!

GM made so much profit in 2003 in SUV's & trucks that they could afford to lose on their fuel-efficient offerings. And I bet they made even more from their side job -- GMAC. Screw selling cars they said, the real money to be made was in the abstract world of finance. GM likely made more money via GMAC than they ever did actually producing vehicles. Hey, we're a service economy -- we get along plenty good enough by managing the elsewhere production by the elsewho.

But now that four domestic production plants are closing, holy shit! We're at world's end!

Another little ancedote. We bought my wife's Stratus from the Elk Grove Dodge dealer in 1996. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to get the salesman or his manager to provide me the fuel economy data on that car? It wasn't posted, they didn't advertise it, didn't even know who to talk to or where to go to find this information out. If it wasn't on the sticker posted on the little window (and it wasn't), it didnt' exist!

To be sure, I had a nearly similar problem at the Honda dealership several months earlier buying the Civic. But the Dodge salesmen...they could care less about some lowly fuck buying a used 4-cylinder Stratus and asking about 'efficiency'. No, their prize was the thirty-something service-economy spoiler eyeing the fastest production truck ever built, the Dodge Ram SRT-10. Sixty two thousand, I recall, taking up the choicest spot in the showroom. And it did
look good, if I say so myself.

While these two were in the back room fumbling about for the info I wanted, I remember noticing how that truck, with a single digit city mpg rating (either 9 or 7, I can't remember) wasn't subjected to the same gas guzzler tax or federal mandated fuel efficiency CAFE standards that the Magnum faced...because trucks were exempted! And SUVs, too, because they are based on a truck chassis! Durangos and SRT-10's were rolling out the door faster than the speed of light.

But my oh my, how fast has the darkness ascended over Dodge! Not only did they recently raffle off the very last SRT-10 produced (as a celebration, mind you)...they're now offering a $2.99 gas guarantee! Most excellent! Having thus fuckered away any ability to survive a 4-dollar-a-gallon-paradigm, they can only offer inefficient vehicles whose prices now subsidize feigned 3 dollar gas.

This should be GM or Dodge's slogan -- Movin' Merika at the Speed of Darkness-- Like A Rock or Ram-Tough ain't got nothin' on that one.