I paid $1.226 for a litre of 87-octane gasoline yesterday. And I know it's only going to get worse. If we don't see $1.40 by the height of the summer, I'll be very surprised.
And yet, in response to the headline in my newspaper today -- GM will eliminate another shift at its truck plant, here in the town where I live -- there is shock and anger. That's understandable, because this will have an effect from the assembly line right down to the checkout clerk at the grocery store. But really, didn't anyone see this coming?
I wasn't old enough at the time to understand all of the complicated politics behind it, but I do remember the OPEC crisis of 1973. I recall seeing the news reports of the lineups, the alternate days, the stations out of gas. Back then, the Big Three were almost exclusively making large cars, and people laughed at those who bought the weird little Japanese cars. Once the crisis hit, they weren't laughing anymore, and that was the beginning of Japan's surge into the North American market. By the time the Big Three got into smaller cars, it was too late to push them back (and the fact that the cars Detroit built were crap didn't help, either).
But as we all know, history is in the past, and slowly, the cars got bigger again. This time around, though, both domestics and imports played the game. Each next-generation model was bigger, heavier and more powerful than the one it replaced, until the model got so bloated that it didn't fit into the segment anymore and the company had to introduce an all-new one to slot under it.
All of the automakers are hooked on the huge profits SUVs provide for them, and they've done a good job of convincing people they need them to be safe, be stylish, and be able to carry seven people (even though they probably never will). The buyer has lapped it up, and only now is realizing that not enough other people are buying small cars/taking transit/conserving energy so there will be enough left over to fuel the barges. And the automakers then justify it by saying that they're only giving the buyers what they want. Well, I want a panda-bear rug for my living room, too, but there's something about the "greater good" that prevents it.
Still, after having pointed fingers (and, in true North American style, not at myself), the question remains: can Detroit, and now Japan and Korea, react swiftly enough to this fuel crisis to bring appropriate cars to market in time? And when they do, and it all dies down, and everyone's in a smaller vehicle, will the next generations of those models stray from their diet, and start the cycle all over again?
