Posted on 08/17/2011 3:18:11 PM PDT by freespirited
President Obama told automakers Monday they should focus on making smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Another breathtaking show of arrogance from a Harvard Law-trained social activist? Call it a breathtaking show of ignorance.
“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” Obama said at a Minnesota town hall. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market.”
Automakers know their market just fine. It is Obama who needs a lesson.
In claiming to have “turned around” the U.S. auto industry, Obama apparently has no idea that the industry has come back on the back of SUVs. Thanks to cheap gas and the resurgence of small trucks — which make profit margins of up to $5,000 per vehicle — taxpayer-assisted GM and Chrysler are in the black again.
They would not be as healthy if they had ignored their customer needs and sold only Obamacars like the Fiat 500. Indeed, even Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat executive handpicked by Obama’s Auto Task Force to run Chrysler is a convert to Obama’s hated “SUVs and trucks.” Unblinkered by Obama’s green zealotry, Marchionne has learned the U.S. market and has beefed up not only Chrysler’s truck offerings — but Maserati’s and Alfa’s SUV lineups as well.
The president is remarkably stubborn in his ignorance.
“Today, automakers . . . refuse to make the transition to fuel-efficient production because they say it’s too expensive,” candidate Obama lectured the Detroit Economic Club in May, 2007. “But expensive is no longer an excuse for inaction.”
He has clearly learned nothing as president. As radical then as he is today, he still insists on forcing vehicles the market doesn’t want. Indeed, vehicles he himself doesn’t want. At the time he lectured automakers in 2007 on making smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Obama himself drove a gas-guzzling, hemi-powered Chrysler 300C – a car he quickly sold when he was found out.
Today, he patronizes automakers on fuel-efficiency from . . . a giant, diesel-powered bus.
That pretty well sums up Obama's view of government spending.
People in product marketing spend their entire careers learning and understanding the market. They're immersed in the real world where a majority of new products are failures in the market. Obama's world is a surreal existence of community (dis)organising and campaign lies. Comments like this by him should not sit well with the real world professionals.
Instead of “You Lie”, How about, “shut the hell up you Moron”!
The ineptitude on display daily makes it the number one comedy of the summer.
...told automakers Monday they should focus on making smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle...Thanks freespirited.
“....show of arrogance from a Harvard Law-trained social activist?”
.
Was it ever proven that he attended Harvard or is it just demorist rumor?
I’m kinda sorta in the market for a new vehicle and now he’s motivating me to get a truck. Maybe a V8 4x4.
5 or 6 speaking from experience, but that goes down a good bit as the thing sits most of the day idling to keep the A/C running. Also that doesn't take into account the other 40 or so vehicles (smallest of which is a Crown Vic cop car) in the motorcade.
What he was really trying to say was, “You can make all the trucks and SUVs you want, but I’m going to make gas so expensive, you’ll go bankrupt.”
Does it burn natural gas?
Bingo! ... and unrest in Eqypt and Libya that was worsened by Obama
Is he channeling Walter Davis? /obscure
I’d guess it’s diesel.
Prevost is using Volvo truck engines these days.
The Obama Bust Tour is a massive failure.
Pray for America
Let’s not overlook the fact that Obama, drawing on his world renown automotive engineering credentials, has declared the laws of physics and the laws of thermodynamics to be null and void and has ordered auto manufacturers to produce vehicles that average 54.5 mpg.
Only a president with his grand view and unusual insight could see that all it takes is a presidential decree to bypass those old outdated notions that have held back automotive developement for over 100 years.
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