The Motor City and California: Is It Splitsville?

[Snellius]

CALIFORNIA and the Motor City used to be the perfect couple.

With its freeways and easygoing, put-the-top-down mentality, the Golden State was the car state of the nation — and the car was most definitely made in America. Can you imagine the Beach Boys singing about imports? ("And she'll have fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the Honda Civic away.") Or try to envision Hollywood icons of days gone by — McQueen and the Rat Pack — in anything but the likes of Fords, Lincolns or Chevys? Of course not. But the freeways got clogged, American cars lost their ring-a-ding-ding and the romance soured. California remains the car state, but about the only new domestic sedans you see on the roads now are from the rental car lots of Avis, Hertz and Budget.

For three decades, Detroit and the Golden State have been accumulating irreconcilable differences. And lately, like all failing marriages, the lawyers have become involved.

Trouble comes on two fronts. First, the state's regulators and environmental groups have been fighting the automobile industry on air quality for years and have become a far more aggressive regulatory forum than Washington. The industry is expected to sue California over its plan to become the first state to regulate tailpipe emissions of gases that are linked to climate change.

Second, and even worse for Detroit, is apathy from California consumers, who buy more than one out of every nine vehicles sold in the United States. The traditional Big Three domestic automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and the Chrysler Group, a division of DaimlerChrysler of Germany — still sell plenty of sport utility vehicles and pickups here. But the sales challenges that the Big Three face nationwide are far worse in California, the nation's largest auto market and an important trendsetter.

"In California, people used to write songs about T-Birds and Corvettes," said William Clay Ford Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Ford, at an industry conference last year. "Today they write regulations."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/automobiles/autospecial/22HAKI.html

[General Discontent]

1. Boo Fucking Hoo

I like my clean air here in Santa Cruz just fine thank you.



D Wolfman

[AP]

2. Now that CA elected a Hummer salesman Gov, maybe this will change.

Ugh.

[Tempest]

3. Doubtful

Arnold supports fuel efficiency in vehicles.

His budget has funding for fuel efficiency rebates.

[AP]

4. Keep dreaming.

He's tight with Detroit.

He'll do what they want.