One of the clearest, saddest, and most infuriating lessons of fascist government manipulation of what should be free markets can be found in the federal government’s decades-long “CAFÉ standards” imposed on automakers.
Conceived in 1975, and mandated in 1978 for passenger cars, and in 1979 for “light trucks,” the Carter-era commands not only start from an unsound premise -- the immoral idea that politicians can tell people what to make and sell, and tell consumers what they can and cannot buy – and not only are forced onto carmakers via unconstitutional means, they also result in perverse, deadly consequences.
Early in the mandate’s history, economists, ambulance attendants, emergency room doctors, and people who lost loved ones could tell the bureaucrats that their demand for higher “average” fuel efficiency led automakers to use lighter metals for their smaller cars, resulting in more crash fatalities. About a decade after the initial imposition, Heritage Foundation writer William Laffer III noted the results of a study by Robert W. Crandall and John D. Graham, in the Journal of Law and Economics, published in April, of 1989:
“This decline in vehicle weight reduces safety. Crandall and Graham explain that ‘the negative relationship between weight and occupant fatality risk is one of the most secure findings in the safety literature.’ (Ibid., p. 110.) Today's cars have less steel in their frames and bodies to absorb the force of a collision. Furthermore, with their narrower wheelbases they are more prone to turn over in an accident. The result: More accidents each year produce major injuries and deaths.”
And he added more, indicating not just correlation, but causation:
“Crandall and Graham estimate that the 500-pound decrease in vehicle weight caused by the current CAFE standard of 27.5 mpg already has increased the number of occupant fatalities that will occur over the life of each model year's cars between 14 percent and 27 percent. This amounts to between 2,200 and 3,900 additional deaths per model year, spread out over the lifetime of the vehicles. Crandall and Graham also estimate that an additional 11,000 to 19,500 serious injuries are likely to occur over the life of each model year's cars because of the current CAFE standards.”
More than a decade after that, Sam Kazman wrote for the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
“Then the National Academy of Sciences issued its report last August, and it found that CAFE kills between 1,300 and 2,600 people per year due to its constraining effect on producing larger cars. For a program that’s been in effect for more than two decades, that’s a huge number.”
And Kazman reiterates the key. Consumers consider numerous factors when deciding to purchase a car. Some might prefer fuel efficiency, some might want performance, some might consider performance to be hauling, some might consider it to be acceleration, or road-hugging and ride. Only through freedom – only through allowing our neighbors to make their own choices and allowing sellers to respond to those revealed preferences – can we see, in the aggregate, what is driving the increase or decrease of certain kinds of vehicle sales.
But when the government imposes mandates, those choices are forbidden, crushed by the feudal lord, the kingpin of politics claiming “authority” over everyone.
Flash-forward to 2024, the coming 2025 car line from Ford, and a newly revealed dimension of how automakers scramble to conform to the federal commands (and fines, if they can’t or won’t comply), even as they try to maintain some of their most popular lines of cars.
Eric Peters, of the pro-liberty car-analysis site, Eric Peters Autos, writes that Ford will continue to make its V-8 Mustang GT, buuuuuut, it will be a specialty car, at a high price (the only way customers can get a stick-shift for the Mustang will be via the V-8) while the other Mustangs will be 4-cylinder, and automatic. As Peters points out, this will allow Ford to continue to promote the Mustang as a muscle car (the GT V-8) but the company will sell very few of those, at a much higher price, because they can't allow a larger proportion of their lower-mileage cars to be sold…
And that is because, of course, doing so would run them afoul of the "average fuel economy," mandated by the feds, and they would get slammed by fines.
“Ford is apparently not going to jack up the price of the 2025 Mustang without the GT. That is to say, without the V8 that is standard equipment in the GT. The MSRP of the four-cylinder turbo-powered “EcoBoost” 2025 Mustang will not be going up by $2,600. It will reportedly sticker for the same as the equivalent 2024 iteration.
Why the disparity?”
Peters offers the answer: the government, with its soft rewording for actions that actually are diktats from thugs they call “administrators” and “agencies.”
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The perverse change in Ford’s Mustang line is a result of the CAFÉ standards and threat of fines.
“Simple. Ford has been given an ‘incentive’ – which is a word much like ‘administration’ in terms of the surface benignity and the underlying menace – to reduce the number of Mustang GTs (the V-8s) it sells. That ‘incentive’ takes the form of compliance costs – imposed by the ‘administration’ for not complying with the ‘regulations’ (another superficially benign word much-loved by the ‘administration’ precisely because the word doesn’t sound as menacing as more direct, honest language).
Specifically, those recently imposed by the ‘administration’ that require – a more honest word – every car company to somehow get its entire roster of cars to average 50-plus miles-per-gallon by less-than six years from now, with fines for ‘non-compliance’ imposed for just that. The V8 is also being ‘incentivized’ out-of-reach for most buyers on account of its ‘emissions’ of the bogeyman gas that does not cause or worsen air pollution but which is numinously asserted to be causing the ‘climate’ to ‘change.’”
And by that, Peters refers to CO2, which, as I have pointed out many times for MRCTV, has not been proven to be causing some kind of global climate catastrophe. I also have noted what sensible automakers and consumers know, that petroleum-based energy offers the best “bang for the buck” and is much more efficient (and less dangerous) than the process of providing electricity for electric vehicles.
When it comes to danger, it is the government that does not allow us to express our preferences, to allow us to weigh how concerned we are about safety versus efficiency and cost. They impose. That is all government ever does, impose costs on us and demands on us and others in the market, while sucking up our taxes and trying to hand out favors to fascist friends.
As Peters notes, if you run a car company and want to navigate the byzantine government mandates, you have to be creative, thus:
“The difficulty – for Ford – is that a Mustang without a V8 is kind of like a beer without the alcohol. In order for the Mustang to retain its appeal it must retain its image – and that means a V8 must at least be available. But if too many people buy a V8 Mustang, then Ford’s ‘fleet average’ fuel economy score is less because a V8 Mustang uses a lot more gas than a four cylinder Mustang.
Solution?
Sell fewer V8 GTs – by making them progressively more expensive so that a diminishing number of people can afford to buy them. But – hey – they’re still available, so the Mustang’s brawny image carries on and that, so it is hoped, will be enough to get people to continue buying gelded Mustangs powered by four cylinder engines.”
As Taylor, the main character played by Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes,” yelled inside his ape-made prison, “It’s a madhouse – A MADHOUSE!’
And the CAFÉ mandates are just one example of the madness. It’s not normal. It’s insane. It comes from the minds of meddlers in DC.
And it’s long past time that they stop.