>I'll be happy to see the US automakers go under just to see these UAW ba$turds become unemployed.
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>I used to swear by US cars and trucks. I didn't buy anything else until 2005 when I realized there wasn't such a thing as a fuel efficient US car (that I could fit in, anyway). Now both my cars are made in Korea (one has a Chevrolet name glued on). I still have my old faithful Dodge 3/4 ton 4WD pickup, but it is only used when actually needed (very rare).
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>Between the US auto industry continuing to design and build fleets of gas pigs in the face of spiralling fuel costs and the UAW and other organized crime based unions causing the prices to be non-competitive, they deserve to be gone.

It's the age old collusion between big oil, tire makers, car servicing and manufacturing to build such a psychology - and it worked. The seventies oil shock and the halfassed attempt of Detroit to build smaller or more fuel efficient cars was, under that psychology, received as some combination of castration and enslavement. The American driver is taught to think macho - bigger, heavier, powerfuller (ahem, here's a word :).

The financial incentive is simpler: it's cheaper to build big; it still has only two axles, one engine, one steering etc, so it doesn't require that more work, but sells at a far higher price, uses larger tires (and let's not forget the aftermarket where they mount these monsters on crane tires)... pack it in with (honestly lobbied and paid for) legislation which will make these things taxed as work vehicles i.e. trucks, but they are still free to drive the streets where trucks must not. So it's got everything - tax breaks, traffic rule breaks, additional tax incentives as if it was a real truck, it's playing to the eternal macho tune "larger is better", and safety concerns (it's bigger and tougher but you yourself aren't, and when it rolls over it will be too heavy for two guys to roll it back and get you out) were actually played backwards - it's dangerous to others, so you need one to defend yourself ("when you're hit by..." - remember that, we heard it here many times).

All the time these guys were living in the dreamland of gasoline eternal.