I love 60s-era "muscle cars" because of their audacious styling and huge engines -- features that, ironically, make today's sport-utility vehicles so compelling to many buyers. But while spiraling insurance rates and OPEC killed off the big V-8 maulers, government regulations are encouraging automakers to build ever larger, more profligate SUVs.
The latest bit of bureaucratic reverse engineering comes to us, as so often happens, from California -- where the Air Resources Board (CARB) recently declared that all "light trucks" weighing under 8,500 pounds will have to meet the same tailpipe emissions standards as passenger cars by 2004.
Under current law, these "light trucks" -- among them popular sport-utility models such as the Ford Explorer and Expedition, Chevy Blazer and Tahoe, Jeep Grand Cherokee, etc. -- are allowed to emit slightly higher amounts of pollution than passenger cars.
Here's where it gets tricky -- so watch carefully!
Expressed as a percentage, "light truck" emissions can be made to appear alarming-- "up to twice the amount of pollution," you'll hear some reporter squeal with indignation. But expressed in more realistic absolute terms, the emissions output of light trucks is revealed as infinitesimal -- as it is with passenger cars. This is the more accurate way to view late-model vehicle exhaust emissions. Both cars and light trucks (SUVs, minivans, pickups, etc.) produce exhaust that is more than 95 percent free of harmful emissions. But because truck emissions are a few percent higher overall, it's easy to gull people into believing SUVs are a menace.
This, at any rate, has become the excuse trotted out by CARB to require all trucks under 8,500 pounds to meet the tailpipe emissions as cars just five years from now.
What the gurus at CARB probably haven't thought of yet is that by setting up a regulatory climate that favors bigger, heavier -- and thus exempt from the rules -- vehicles, they've almost guaranteed that the automakers will respond with SUVs that exceed the 8,5O0-pound limit--and thereby skirt the new emissions edict.
Gotcha!
Buyers have thoroughly demonstrated their love of 5.4 liter, 6,000-pound Lincoln Navigators and similarly massive Chevy Tahoes and GMC Yukons with their rumbly 5.7 liter V-8s. And the truly Herculean Chevy Suburban -- with its available 7.4 liter monster V-8 -- is already capable of slipping past 8,500 pounds. All GM would have to do is offer a V-10 engine (Surprise, surprise, surprise! -- Ford has one on deck; Chrysler already offers one) and lard on a few more options to make the Suburban-- or Tahoe -- fulsome enough to make the cut.
There's every incentive in the world for the automakers to build such monumental vehicles without another prod from government regulators (inadvertent though such a prod might be). Profit per sale on an SUV such as the Lincoln Navigator is around $12,000 -- as compared to less than $1,000 for the typical mid-sized family car. Half of all new "car" purchases are trucks -- reflecting buyer preference for safer, more capable vehicles, irrespective of fuel economy considerations.
A well-appointed Humvee -- with its satisfying turbodiesel engine chugging away -- could be just the ticket for commuting in California. Especially when one can avoid having to buy a smaller rig with less power (thanks to added emissions gear) that's more expensive to buy and maintain (for the same reason).
As George Peppard used to say in his 'A-Team" role, "I love it when a plan comes together!"
Eric Peters is a nationally syndicated automotive writer.
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