i drive one of those small, efficient & affordable american cars, a ford focus. it doesn’t have GPS or interface with my iPod in any way, but it gets awesome mileage and is easily the most reliable vehicle I’ve ever owned this side of a bicycle. you wouldn’t know it from watching TV, but the fuel-efficient non-shitbox american compact exists, and IMHO can be a better value-per-dollar than your sexy japanese lifestylemobiles. mind you, i’ve no doubt that cheap, decent-quality little cars like mine are only around because of automakers’ efforts to game the CAFE system, but that in itself doesn’t bother me — on the contrary, it’s proof that with a little friendly government coercion it’s possible to make better alternatives available.

the problem isn’t that detroit can’t or doesn’t make efficient and decent-quality compacts. absent the bells & whistles (do i really need a rearview camera?), these models get all the engineering love they need — what they don’t get is the marketing love. where they’re advertised at all, they’re pitched as “starter” cars for students, singles, and the budget-conscious; the slogan might as well be “only a pussy would buy this car!” given that attitude, it’s not surprising that consumers who value small-scale and environmentally-responsible transportation would be more responsive to a sleek asian design sensibility and a more overtly viridian approach to marketing. all well and good for the affluent-ish and the early-adopting hybrid enthusiasts, but how to get green machines to the masses, especially in the middle of a recession? i don’t think anybody on either side of the pacific has answered that.

marketing reflects corporate strategy, which in detroit’s case was one of assuming that redblooded americans don’t give a shit about efficiency, placing their bets accordingly, and then pumping billions into advertising and political arm-twisting aimed at establishing and entrenching that reality, over and against a growing body of inconvenient facts to the contrary. THAT’s why the big 3 don’t deserve a bailout: they not only failed to anticipate and respond to a changing market, they stuck their fingers in their ears and actively worked to promulgate the fantasy that unlimited oil consumption is our god-given right as americans.

all that said, the UAW is right that the current predicament has less to do with consumers turning their backs on gas-guzzlers specifically, and more to do with people not buying anything at all, ’cause people are broke. not that the car companies are any less to blame on that account, since they bear plenty of the blame for the shitty economy anyway, for reasons already noted…

But it’s also reliability, initial build quality, safety, and a host of other things that buyers consider when making a purchase.

The problem isn’t that Detroit doesn’t manufacture any small, fuel-efficient vehicles — they do. The problem is that those vehicles are crappy afterthoughts brought to market to satisfy CAFE fleet-based economy standards, while the vehicles that get all the engineering love and attention are the behemoths.

A small, efficient, affordable American car tends to be a piece of crap. A small, efficient, affordable Asian vehicle, on the other hand, tends to have received every bit as much love from the manufacturer as the larger offerings.

That’s my impression, any way. I’ve been deeply involved in the purchase of three brand-new cars in my life, which entailed a fair amount of shopping around. The fuel-efficient american stuff was crap. I never felt like U.S. automakers gave a shit about the segment of the market I was looking in… they only cared about high-margin SUVs.