Auto Industry About to Take a Hit from Subprime Lending Cap

At the time I wrote yesterday's post about the dangerous bubble blowing in new car lending, I hadn't yet seen this article from Wolf Street documenting how the banks that finance auto loans have become so concerned about the perils of subprime lending that Wells Fargo, the nation's largest lender, is slashing its subprime auto lending by nearly two-thirds:

Wells Fargo, which originated $30 billion in auto loans last year, has for the first time put a cap on subprime auto loans, limiting the dollar volume of subprime loan originations to 10% of its total auto loan originations. The New York Times reported that the bank, “according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly,” has been “increasingly rejecting loans that dealers expected would be approved.”

And Wells Fargo’s subprime cap of 10% of loan volume is setting the tone for the rest of the industry, where the national average has been 27.4%.

Regulators are not only worried about the banks but also about the structured securities auto lending has spawned.

If subprime auto loans go bad in large numbers, as they’re likely to do, the structured securities based on them will take a hit, and investors will get to lick their wounds once again in their chase for yield. Banks and specialized subprime lenders will take a hit too. Megabanks like Wells Fargo might see their earnings get dented, but the amounts aren’t big enough to topple them. Smaller lenders that have specialized in subprime might not be so lucky. But the auto loan subprime bubble, when it implodes, won’t sink the US financial system as a whole; it’s just not big enough.

Yet if these lenders are cutting back on subprime lending in a drastic manner, all heck will break lose in the auto industry.

What what motivated me to write yesterday's post was the glaringly disturbing fact from the seemingly innocuous USA Today article I linked which said that the average amount financed for new car loans had risen by almost $1,000 in just one year. Immediately and without doing any other research, I recognized that such an increase indicated that a dangerous bubble had formed in both new car lending and the new car sales. To see my hypothesis confirmed so quickly by the lending industry itself was really quite remarkable.

I've said this before: it really doesn't take any fancy degrees or insider knowledge to decipher what is really going on in our economy and our society. All it takes is applying a little common sense to the information that is readily available out there. But sadly, common sense is out of fashion these days.


Bonus: This one is way too easy

Average New Car Buyer Pisses Away Over $7,000

I don't watch a lot of television, but when I do it usually isn't very long before I'm bombarded by the inevitable slew of new car commercials. Almost always, these commercials make sure to mention that 0.0% financing is available to "well qualified buyers." That's why it was a bit of a surprise to read the following factoid from an article in USA Today:

Americans' average new-car loan payment hit a record $482 the fourth quarter, and car buyers were paying an average 4.56% for loans, according to researcher Experian Automotive.

I wasn't math major but even I can deduce that with the availability of zero percent financing for most makes and models these days, if the AVERAGE new car buyer is paying that much in interest it means many people are paying a far higher rate than that. These are, of course, subprime buyers with bad credit. Without them, I would gather, the automobile industry would be in deep trouble.

The average interest rate, on the other hand, doesn't seem so bad considering the cost of auto loans historically. I remember being charged 12% on my first car loan back in 1990--I was a recent college graduate who hadn't yet established much of a credit history--and that was not an atypical rate back then. It would also be the LAST car loan I ever took out as I vowed not to ever let a bank fleece me like that again.

Yep 4.56% doesn't seem so bad in comparison, until you consider how much the price of new cars has soared in recent years. Here's USA Today again:

What's more, the Experian report shows that the amount borrowed to buy a new car in the fourth quarter hit a record $28,381, up more than $950 from a year ago and a $582 increase from the previous quarter.

Edmunds.com auto researchers show the average transaction price for a new vehicle in the fourth quarter was $33,352.

That means buyers were making down payments averaging about 15%.

Furthermore:

Experian says the average length of a new-car loan in the fourth quarter rose to an average 66 months.

Using all this data, I pulled out my trusty calculator and determined that if the average amount borrowed to purchase a new car is $28,381, the average interest rate paid is 4.56% and the average loan length is 5.5 years, then the average amount of interest paid on new car loans is a staggering $7,117, or more than 25% of the cost of the vehicle.

That's over seven grand that the average new car purchaser is pissing away by giving it to a bank, even in these times of supposedly wondrous 0.0% financing. So why are people doing it? USA Today again:

"In most parts of the country, vehicles are viewed as a necessity to everyday life, which is why we continue to see consumers willing to take out larger loans as the average price of vehicles continues to rise," said Melinda Zabritski, Experian's senior director of automotive finance.

Given how shitty or completely unavailable public transportation is outside of our major cities, it is true that most Americans cannot get by without access to a car. Where Experian's brain dead mouthpiece gets it wrong is assuming that people have to purchase new cars as opposed to used, or that they have to purchase the more expensive models. In fact, additional data from the very same article shows that used car purchasers are far more likely to buy without financing:

The new-car loan data hits home with most car buyers, because 84% of new vehicle purchases were made with financing. Used, 55.2%.

Which says to me that the average used car purchaser is far smarter with their money than the average new car purchaser.

But the most disturbing factoid in the whole article is the fact that the average amount of new car loans has increased by nearly $1,000 in just the past year. Given that incomes for people outside of the top 10% have been flat for many years, that annual rate of growth cannot be sustainable for very long. Which would indicate that American new car sales will begin to decline at some point in the near future...possibly dramatically.

No wonder most Americans hate math so much.


Bonus: "It's all mixed up," indeed

Strauss Discount Auto Shutting Down All 46 Stores

From North Jersey.com:

Strauss Discount Auto, the 93-year-old company founded in Newark, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the fourth time, closing all 46 of its stores, including 24 in New Jersey.

The troubled auto-parts retailer formerly known as R&S Strauss abruptly shuttered its retail outlets - including two shops in Wayne, and others in Bergenfield, East Rutherford, Lodi and Passaic - and filed its petition in federal bankruptcy court in Newark Tuesday. The company also dismissed 580 employees, according to the Chapter 11 filing.

On Wednesday afternoon at the Strauss Auto store on Route 23 in Wayne, two signs on its doors said, "This store is closed." The signs also advised customers with inquiries to call 800-787-4554, Strauss's regular customer-service line.

The recording didn't mention the Chapter 11 filing. It merely said, "You have reached Strauss Auto ... We are on the line right now attending to other calls, but want to address your issue." It then asks customers to leave a message.

In Wayne, where the parking lot was empty and no one was inside, the signs also advised store managers to contact their "DM," district manager, and for store associates to contact their store manager.

In addition to its New Jersey shops, Strauss Discount Auto closed 19 stores in New York City metro area and three in Pennsylvania, according to the filing. Strauss president Joseph Catalano also explained some of the reasons for the company's latest financial woes.

"Increased power, gas and fuel costs have caused consumers to delay vehicle service and replacement expenditures," Catalano said in a filing. "Mild winter weather also resulted in a disappointing 2011-2012 winter selling season and a subsequent decline in spring business due to a lack of winter driving conditions."

One would think that with people not being able to afford to buy as many new cars and keeping their old ones longer that car repair would be a booming business. Not so much, however, if drivers are becoming financially tapped out. It's scary to think that many people are putting off vital maintenance and that their cars may thus be more likely to break down in heavy traffic. Chalk it up as yet another dire example of our crumbling transportation infrastructure.


Bonus: From my You Tube channel - another little ditty about driving

States Explore New Ways to Tax Motorists for Road Repair

I've covered this topic before, but since the dumbass idea of taxing drivers for the miles they drive instead of just raising gasoline taxes won't go away, here it is again. USA Today has the story:

States are looking for new ways of taxing motorists as they seek to pay for highway and bridge repair and improvements without relying on the per-gallon gasoline tax widely viewed as all but obsolete.

Ummm..why exactly are gasoline taxes supposedly obsolete?
Among the leading ideas: Taxing drivers for how many miles they travel rather than how much gasoline they buy. Minnesota and Oregon already are testing technology to keep track of mileage. Other states, including Washington and Nevada, are preparing similar projects.

The efforts are being prompted by the fact that gasoline taxes no longer provide enough money to pay for roads and bridges — especially when Congress and many state legislatures are reluctant to increase taxes imposed on each gallon. The federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon hasn't been raised in nearly two decades. More than half the states have not raised their gas tax this millennium. Fuel-efficiency also is behind the efforts. Electric-powered vehicles are growing in numbers. In 2009, President Obama set the nation's most aggressive fuel-efficiency standards for new vehicles, ordering a 40% increase by 2016.

"As the (national vehicle) fleet becomes more fuel efficient … we're going to lose a lot of revenue from the gas tax. If it's not replaced, we're going to see our transportation infrastructure deteriorate," says Joshua Schank, president of the non-partisan Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C. He expects to see a state vehicle miles-traveled (VMT) tax within the next five to 10 years.

I assume from that quote that you only get to be the president of the non-partisan Eno Center for Transportation if you are either an idiot or a paid stooge for wealthy assholes who don't wish to pay their fair share in taxes. Here is what I wrote about this issue last November:

From privacy concerns, to the cost of administering the program, to the logistics of getting a monitoring device on every car, to the unaffordability of a lump sum annual tax payment--the whole concept is so riddled with real world practical flaws that it should have been rejected outright before it ever received coverage in the mainstream media.

Then you have the most obvious drawback of all in that this scheme PENALIZES people who buy fuel-efficient vehicles. After all, what fucking sense does it make from an energy conservation standpoint that a Hummer, which barely gets double-digit miles to the gallon, should be taxed at the same rate as a hybrid that gets 50 MPG, especially when the smaller, lighter hybrid is likely to cause less wear and tear to the roadways that then need to be repaired?

And, of course, I also wrote about the real reason why this horrible idea just won't die:

You don't think it might be because wealthier Americans, including the one-percenters who are the biggest campaign contributors, are the ones most likely to be driving those Hummers and other gas guzzlers, do you? Or that big business would get the contracts to manufacture and install the monitoring devices?

It really is incredible that such a cockamamie scheme is being contemplated just to avoid raising a tax that falls hardest on the wealthy. The sad fact is that the one-percenters are out to fuck the rest of us in so many different ways these days that it is difficult to keep track of them all.


Bonus: From my You Tube channel - another cool driving tune from Chicago indie rock troubadors, The Vulgar Boatmen

Crumbling Infrastructure Porn: Drivers Pay "Secret" Road Tax In $15 Billion For Car Repair

The days of Happy Motoring, as Jim Kunstler is fond of calling it, may be drawing to a close. Here is Bloomberg with the details:

Gil Giro doesn’t need a license plate to tell where a car is from -- he just looks underneath the chassis.

“Every time we see a car that comes in from the district, you can see that its suspension is torn up,” said Giro, the owner of Gili’s Automotive in Rockville, Maryland, outside Washington. “It’s almost like the vehicle has been driven off- road.”

The nation’s capital isn’t alone in offering motorists teeth-rattling rides as U.S. lawmakers tussle over how to pay the bill for mending battered roads. Mechanics such as Giro say they see the hidden tax car owners pay every day in torn tires, misaligned front ends and bent axles.

Drivers won’t get relief anytime soon.

The U.S. Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for road and transit projects in Washington and all 50 states, has been bailed out by Congress three times since 2008 for a total of $34.5 billion. The gasoline tax that supports the fund hasn’t been raised in 19 years, and with the cost of materials such as steel and asphalt on the rise, the fund is expected to have a deficit of about $10 billion this year.

Car owners already are shelling out far more than that to repair damage done to their vehicles by America’s ruined streets and highways, industry and academic researchers say.

Motorists pay $67 billion annually for increased fuel consumption, body dents, worn tires and premature wear wrought by pitted roads, according to The Road Information Program, a Washington-based research group. The group’s board includes representatives from construction-equipment makers Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and Deere & Co. (DE), as well as Vulcan Materials Co. (VMC), a Birmingham, Alabama-based asphalt and concrete producer.

That works out to $324 per licensed driver, says Frank Moretti, TRIP’s director of policy and research. The figure is an average of all vehicles and can vary widely between cars and large commercial trucks, which are prone to costlier damage, he says.

Karim Chatti, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University in East Lansing, estimates that damage linked to poor roads probably runs between $15 to $25 billion annually for car owners, not including tire damage and fuel-efficiency costs.

As a denizen of the DC-area, I can attest to how crappy the roads are around here. And this is happening in a part of the country where local tax revenues are still fairly robust because of federal government spending. I can't imagine what it must be like in some of the less well off locales. It's now a race to see what will destroy our automobile-centric economy first, high oil and gasoline prices, or our crumbling highways.


Bonus: Some Drivin'n'Cryin' seemed appropriate here

GM Stops Building Chevy Volts For 5 Weeks--Lays Off 1,300

Lessee, according to Gas Buddy.com, the price of a gallon of the sweet stuff just topped $3.70 again, higher than it has ever been this early in the year. Gas prices have once again become a hot topic evidenced, as I pointed out the other day, by the number of mainstream news stories breathlessly warning of the impending possibility of $5.00-a-gallon gasoline by this summer.

Given all of that, you would think that newfangled electric cars like the Chevy Volt would be selling like hotcakes right now...and you would be precisely wrong. Not only are the cars not selling, GM is temporarily laying off the workers who build them. Here is USA Today with the details:

General Motors is stopping production of the Chevy Volt and European sibling Opel Ampera for five weeks due to slow sales.

"Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand," said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

GM told the 1,300 employees building Volts at its Detroit Hamtramck plant that they will be laid off from March 19 to April 23.

Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and 1,626 so far this year. In 2011, it sold 7,671 -- short of its initial goal of 10,000. And GM had planned to expand production of the plug-in, extended-range electric car to 60,000 this year, with 45,000 for sale in the U.S.

So what exactly is the problem with this wonder vehicle that is supposed to solve all of our transportation-related energy problems?

The Volt is a technological "halo" car for GM, but also has been a political target. Critics have pointed to its $40,000 price tag and the federal subsidy of $7,500 plus state subsidies for people to buy one. They charge that the average buyer has a $170,000 household income and doesn't need to have a new-car purchase subsidized.

Sales also took a hit last fall when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into why two Volts burst into flames days or weeks after severe NHTSA crash testing. NHTSA later deemed the Volt safe, meanwhile GM on Jan. 5 said it would improve the battery structure and coolant system.

I realize that the conservatives have been dumping on the Volt in order to try and score political points with their troglodyte base, and I have no desire to help them in that cause. But liberal and progressives also need to stop drinking the hopium surrounding the Volt and electric cars in general. They are NOT "green," because they for the most part run on the coal that fuels many of our electrical power plants. And they won't save us from Peak Oil because there is no way we could possibly generate enough electricity to power 250,000,000 of them. The truth of the matter is that the age of the passenger automobile, which is an historical aberration that has lasted only a little over a century now, has at most another decade or two to run before being consigned to the dustbin of history.

But hey, at least they build the damn things in America. That's something, right?


Bonus: Ballsy southern rockers Drivin'n'Cryin' rock Detroit

Average Vehicle Age in U.S. Reaches a New Record of 10.8 Years

When people can't afford to buy new cars, they drive the ones they have for longer than they might have otherwise. As a result, the average age of the vehicle fleet rises. That's just common sense, as reported on Tuesday by North Jersey.com:

The average age of a car or truck in the United States hit a record 10.8 years last year as job security and other economic worries kept many people from making big-ticket purchases such as a new car.

That's up from the old record of 10.6 years in 2010, and it and continues a trend that dates to 1995, when the average age of a car was 8.4 years, according to a study of state vehicle registration data by the Polk automotive research firm.

However, despite the fact that gasoline prices have been over $3.00 per gallon for more than a year now, and many analysts expect it will top $4.00 or even more by this coming summer, hope still springs eternal in the auto industry:

However, Polk analyst Mark Seng says that a rebound in sales last year and expected growth for the next couple of years will likely lower the average age of cars as a whole in America. The aging of the American auto fleet has been a big boon for repair shops and companies that sell replacement auto parts.

In 2011, auto sales rebounded a bit to 12.8 million vehicles, especially in November and December, when sales were unusually strong. Last year, sales in the United States totaled 11.6 million. Many analysts expect this year to be better than 2011, anywhere from 13.5 million to more than 14 million vehicles. Even 14 million is still below what industry analysts consider a normal sales rate of close to 15 million per year, and far lower than the U.S. sales peak of 17 million sales that was reached in 2005.

I have proposition for Polk analyst Mark Seng. My prediction is that auto sales for 2012 will actually lag behind last year because of the continued high gas prices and the likely global economic slowdown. That's called reality-based analysis, rather than wishful thinking. So if I'm right, Mark, can I have your cushy job?


Addendum: There's nothing more gratifying than running acrosss another news story which confirms my post's thesis before I even hit the "publish post" button. Here is Bloomberg with a report that U.S. fuel consumption has sunk to the lowest level in 10 years:

Oil traded near a one-week low after gasoline stockpiles rose and consumption fell to the lowest in 10 years in the U.S., the world’s biggest crude consumer.

Futures were little changed in New York after slipping 0.2 percent yesterday. While crude inventories declined, gasoline use dropped to the lowest since September 2001, and supplies of the motor fuel increased to the highest level in 10 months, according to a report yesterday from the Energy Department. U.S. demand for oil products in the latest four-week period was down 7.2 percent from a year ago, according to Societe Generale SA.

“This is an ominous sign for the U.S. economy,” Mike Wittner, head of oil market research at Societe Generale in New York, said in a report dated yesterday. “Gasoline fundamentals remain weak. The market is anticipating firmer future fundamentals due to Atlantic Basin refinery closures. We are skeptical.”

It sure is, Mike. Sorry, Mark, but you might as well be wishing for unlimited unicorns and lolipops at this point.


Bonus: "I wish I was a messenger, and all the news was good"

What's the Matter With the Electric Car?

Very few people want to buy them, actually. Here is MSNBC with the details:

If the White House hopes to meet its ambitious goal of putting 1.5 million battery cars on the road by mid-decade it better hope that 2011 wasn’t a good indication of what Americans think of electric vehicles.

Add them all up, hybrids, plug-ins and pure battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, and they accounted for little more than 2% of the U.S. automotive market last year. Remove conventional gas-electric models, such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion Hybrid, from the equation and more advanced battery vehicles generated barely 20,000 sales.

“I’d say they failed,” proclaims Joe Phillippi, chief analyst with AutoTrends Consulting.

Ouch...harsh. So if they failed, as Mr. Phillippi says, WHY exactly did they fail?

...they aren’t cheap, battery vehicles saddled by price tags that are thousands – in some cases, tens of thousands – of dollars more than comparable gasoline vehicles.

That might make sense had fuel prices held at the near-record levels seen in early 2011, but gas has dropped sharply since then. Meanwhile, manufacturers have been making major strides when it comes to the fuel efficiency of conventional, gas-powered vehicles. In the compact segment where Ford will compete with the Focus Electric, for example, 40 mpg on the highway is the new norm.

Both government bureaucrats and electric vehicle manufacturers, says analyst Sullivan, “aren’t giving consumers credit for being able to do the math. It just doesn’t make economic sense” to buy an electric vehicle – at least if your primary goal is to save money by reducing your energy bills.

There are, of course, other reasons. There’s the desire to clean up the air and to curb oil imports, especially from the Mideast. But whether that can be used to draw more buyers into the market remains to be seen. Especially in this economy, value is the big motivator, rather than politics and social concerns.

Oh, no shit? You mean that very few people other than a handful of greenie-minded, upper middle class yuppie types actually takes such things as the environment or Middle East oil imports into consideration when making a major purchase like a car? For that brilliant observation, let me present you with the coveted Dr. Obvious award. I'm not saying it's right, but it is a fact of life that most people make purchasing decisions based upon the bottom line to their pocketbooks.

I wrote back in June on this blog about how when I was ready to purchase a new vehicle after nine years and ultimately decided on a Ford Escape, that I chose to go with the conventional gasoline powered model rather than the hybrid because the latter cost nearly $6,000 more (and there was a three month waiting list for the hybrid). Six months later, I've put just over 5,000 miles on the car, meaning I would have to drive it for many more years to make up the cost difference between the purchase price and what I would have saved on gasoline.

The sad fact is that the time for America to start transitioning to electric vehicles was 20 years ago or more before we began staring the peak oil crisis right in the face. Even if President Hopey-Changey's unrealistic goal of 1.5 million EVs on the road by the middle of the decade is met, that is less than one percent of the total and still leaves something on the order of 250 million gasoline powered vehicles still out there.

There is also the problem that even if every car were suddenly magically converted to being an EV, the power grid couldn't handle charging them all. Additionally, much of our electricity comes from coal fired power plants, and coal is also not only also a fossil fuel but a bigger contributor to global warming than oil. You wouldn't think it would be necessary to have to keeping repeating all of that, but sadly it is because so few people seem to realize it.

I suspect that going forward EVs will remain a niche product purchased mostly by select members of the upper middle class in a desperate attempt to keep their car-centric lifestyles going as long as possible. But I doubt that ultimately they will have a future that lasts much longer than their gasoline powered counterparts.


Bonus: The Boss's Chevy wasn't a Volt, that's for sure

Why Do Personal Electronic Devices Hate America?

This past week, there was a report that the National Trasportation Safety Board has taken the dramatic step of recommending that every U.S. state ban the use of personal electronic devices while driving. Here are the details:

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) called Tuesday, Dec. 13, for a nationwide ban on nearly all use of personal electronic devices — including cellphones and smartphones — by drivers.

The board’s recommendation came in a review of a highway accident that occurred last year in Gray Summit, Mo., that killed two people and injured 38 others. A review determined the accident likely was caused by a distracted driver who sent several text messages in the moments before the pileup.

The NTSB’s recommended that all 50 states and the District of Columbia ban drivers’ “nonemergency use of portable electronic devices” except for uses that support the task of driving, such as GPS navigation. The board is also calling for the ban of drivers’ use of hands-free calling technology.

Just for the record, I am in total agreement with this idea, even though the corporate interests that profit from the manufacture and distribution of cell phones will no doubt lobby heavily against the effort citing its "curtailment" a people's "freedom" to risk their stupid lives while chattering on and on about nothing. Because it really is Jerry Seinfeld's America, and the rest of us are just living in it.

Nevertheless, this story might have been of only passing interest to me but for this passage:

“According to [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration], more than 3,000 people lost their lives last year in distraction-related accidents", said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman in a statement Tuesday. "It is time for all of us to stand up for safety by turning off electronic devices when driving."

A press release announcing NTSB’s recommendations cited a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study of commercial drivers that found “a safety-critical event is 163 times more likely if a driver is texting, emailing or accessing the Internet.”

Wait an minute...where have I seen that "more than 3,000" figure before? Oh that's right, that's the number of Americans who were killed on 9/11, the event which in the subsequent decade has caused us to lose our collective sanity, shred the Constitution, spend trillions of dollars on unnecessary wars, kill thousands of our own soldiers and hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, engage in torture and rendition, open an offshore concentration camp and pretty much turn our backs on our long tradition of civil liberties just to make sure such a horrific event never happens again. Yet every year out on or highways and byways, just as many people are killed, and many thousands more are no doubt maimed, because of how collectively self-absorbed and distracted we are. All without a peep of protest.

There is a very simple reason why those of us who oppose the destruction of the personal liberties of American citizens in the name of fighting terrorism feel the way we do. The fanatical efforts to prevent the next potential major terrorist attack have caused far more damage to the fabric of our society than even another successful attack could ever cause.

There is a risk in life's every activity. Clearly, right now in America you are at far more risk of death and serious injury from being struck by a distracted driver than you are from an attack by a Muslim jihadist. But everyone makes a rational decision whenever they leave their house that the nevertheless infinitesimal risk that they will become a fatal auto accident victim is outweighed by their need to go to work, go to school, go grocery shopping, or whatever else they need to do to survive. It's a point that cannot be reemphasized often enough: by crippling our economy and enacting draconian curtailments of the freedom of our citizens, we are doing far more to destroy ourselves than Osama Bin Laden ever could have hoped to achieve.

Peak Vehicle Miles Travelled Shows the True State of America's Economy

Related to this morning's post, I ran across the above chart of annual vehicle miles traveled (plotted monthly by 12-month average) the other day on the excellent Gregor.us peak oil blog. As you can see, from the mid-1980s (just after world oil prices collapsed after hitting their initial peak in the late-1970s due to greater fuel efficiency in the United States and the coming online of the last "supergiant" oil fields in Mexico, Alaska and the North Sea) until 2008 total annual vehicle miles driven in the United States climbed steadily upwards with no significant break. All told, they actually increased by an astonishing 66% during that period.

The spiking of gasoline prices above $4.00 a gallon in the summer of 2008 and the resulting market crash that fall led to the first significant drop in miles driven in over two decades. Since then, the number has struggled to recover and actually appears to be getting ready to dip again.

Forget the stock market, or the GDP numbers or the manipulated official unemployment statistics, this chart is a much more reliable indicator of the state of the real economy. Except for a small portion of the population who live carless in the big cities, personally owned vehicles are absolutely essential for most people to engage in economic activity. Moreover, most goods are transported to their point of sale via trucks.

Clearly, this chart shows that the government's response to the economic crisis--massive amounts of unsustainable federal deficit spending--merely arrested the crash of the real economy and is holding it in a state of suspended animation. How much longer that effort can keep propping things up is anyone's guess. Sooner or later the sharp drop in annual vehicle miles driven is going to resume, along with a resumption of the economic crash.


Bonus: There are a lot of great driving songs that celebrate the all-too-brief and dying era when Americans could just take to the road whenever they felt like it. But my favorite is this little 1989 gem from the criminally unappreciated indie-rock band, The Vulgar Boatmen.

The Proposed "Pay-Per-Mile" Tax is a Shockingly Dumb Idea

I've written on this blog before that one of the biggest problems with our complex modern industrial society is that a substantial portion of the population is fundamentally incompetent, even in areas in which they are supposedly expert. Case in point is a recent suggestion put forth by so-called transportation "experts" as to how to solve the severe underfunding of the nation's federal highway fund, as reported the other day by CNN:

Drivers often forget that they pay for highway construction and maintenance through federal fuel taxes: 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel. "The notion that the road has ever been free is sort of a self-delusion," said Neil.

But the fuel tax is running out of steam, experts warn, because more efficient vehicles are using less fuel and rising fuel prices discourage driving. As tax revenue falls, so does the nation's ability to pay for road construction and maintenance.

The solution, say many transportation experts, is to replace -- or supplement -- fuel taxes with a per-mile tax on every vehicle in America.

Okay, so how exactly would such a harebrained scheme work, anyway?

Imagine 254 million vehicles.

That's the number of cars, trucks and motorcycles that a tax per mile system would have to monitor.

Some proposals call for using GPS satellites to gather mileage data on each vehicle.

Whoa. Really?

When it comes to tracking their vehicles, Americans tend to be really touchy about protecting their privacy.

According to a University of Iowa poll, only about 20% of drivers would choose a pay-per-mile tax system if GPS tracking is involved.

The anonymous driver will soon be an extinct species, says Neil.

"You can't drop off the grid. Ten years from now, it will be virtually impossible to drive a car that doesn't have an electronic signature," said Neil.

"It doesn't matter whether you have OnStar or you rent a car -- it's going to have a 'black box.' If you've got any kind of navigation, The Man -- with a capital M -- knows where you are."

University of Iowa research shows that the public would be more willing to accept per-mile taxes if its monitoring technology doesn't record a vehicle's specific location.

Taking your vehicle to have someone read the odometer every year -- like some states do with emissions testing -- might be an option.

But some experts fear that method might be too expensive. Also, the resulting once-a-year tax bill might be too much for some drivers to pay.

One idea tested in Minnesota eliminates GPS and uses cell phone text messaging technology.

During fuel stops at gas stations, a device that already exists in most cars would text the car's mileage information to a "back office" data base.

The office would then adjust the price of fuel at the pump based on each vehicle's mileage driven.

Implementing any system would be tricky, says Paul Hanley, who headed the Iowa study. Retrofitting existing cars with the required technology would be almost impossible, he says.

The cheapest and least difficult option says Hanely, would be to install devices in new cars and slowly transition to the new system as the nation's entire fleet of vehicles turns over.

It takes about eight years before 90% of our vehicles are turned over, Hanley says, and more than 10 years to convert the fleet to nearly 100%.

"It's inevitable," says Hanley, who's been conducting a real-world test of a pay-per-mile system with more than 2,500 drivers in 12 locations from coast-to-coast. Per-mile taxes "with a combination of tolls is coming as we move away from the fuel tax."

Sorry about the length of that excerpt, but I felt I had to include it all to demonstrate just how breathtakingly stupid this whole idea is. From privacy concerns, to the cost of administering the program, to the logistics of getting a monitoring device on every car, to the unaffordability of a lump sum annual tax payment--the whole concept is so riddled with real world practical flaws that it should have been rejected outright before it ever received coverage in the mainstream media.

Then you have the most obvious drawback of all in that this scheme PENALIZES people who buy fuel-efficient vehicles. After all, what fucking sense does it make from an energy conservation standpoint that a Hummer, which barely gets double-digit miles to the gallon, should be taxed at the same rate as a hybrid that gets 50 MPG, especially when the smaller, lighter hybrid is likely to cause less wear and tear to the roadways that then need to be repaired?

One question that the CNN stenographer reporter should have immediately asked Mr. Hanley is, why exactly are we "moving away" from the fuel tax when raising it seems to be a far more simple solution? Actually, the reporter does at least mention the possibility a bit farther down in the article:

The best and least complicated solution is to raise the fuel tax, which hasn't changed since 1993. But that idea comes with its own set of political challenges. Many members of Congress would likely oppose any kind of tax hike.

Oh, so we're supposed to unquestioningly swallow the idea that Congress would oppose any sort of increase in the fuel tax, but would merrily go along with a complex and damn near unworkable scheme such as this? Okay, I'll play along. Maybe they WOULD in fact agree to implement this idea. If so, why do you suppose that would be? You don't think it might be because wealthier Americans, including the one-percenters who are the biggest campaign contributors, are the ones most likely to be driving those Hummers and other gas guzzlers, do you? Or that big business would get the contracts to manufacture and install the monitoring devices? Man, and I thought I was cynical.

The only good news here is that it is extremely unlikely that America's car-centric, business-as-usual economic model is going to hold together long enough for this nefarious scheme to be implemented. I merely highlighted it to serve as yet another example of how the elites and their totally compromised so-called "experts" are deviously and tirelessly thinking of new ways to fuck over the rest of us, even if the idea in question clearly shows just how incompetent they are.

Friday Rant: Chrysler's New $40,000, Gas Guzzling Boondoggle

You would have thought that when the Obama administration raped the taxpayers used taxpayer money to bail out dinosaur automakers GM and Chrysler that at the VERY LEAST it would insist that the two companies get serious about focusing on building more fuel efficient cars. After all, gasoline prices spiked to above four dollars a gallon the summer before the Mighty O's election, and the resulting market crash was a big factor in the country consenting to be governed by a guy whose last name is merely one letter away from "Osama."

Well, if we've learned anything about President Hopey-Changey these past three grueling years, it's that he will doing ANYTHING to maintain the illusion of business as usual and won't lift a finger to change the ways of big corporations, even after giving those corporations billions of dollars to save their asses. The latest example of this depressing dynamic in action was reported this week:

The special edition Wrangler will hit showrooms next month for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $36,495 for the two-door model and $40,070 for the four-door (Jeep Wrangler Unlimited) model, not including destination fees. Regular 2012 Wrangler models start at $22,045.

Sounds like just the kind of vehicle we need on the roads to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, doesn't it? Paint that sucker lime green while you're at it, cause that's a "planet-saver" right there.

But wait, it get worse when you consider the mentality of the people to whom they are trying to sell this new monstrosity:

Chrysler Group LLC is taking its Jeep partnership with video game publisher Activision to a whole new level with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," according to officials.

In preparation for the game’s midnight release, the Auburn Hills-based automaker Monday launched a “groundbreaking campaign for the 2012 Wrangler Call of Duty: MW3 Special Edition.”

“This is more than an advertising campaign, this is a true experience that captures the excitement one feels when playing ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’ and when driving the all-new 2012 Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: MW3 Special Edition,” said Olivier Francois, Chrysler chief marketing officer.

The campaign dubs the Wrangler as, “The toughest vehicle in the world. Any world.” Ads will introduce the new tagline, as well as the soon-to-be released special edition version of the brand’s popular vehicle.

That's right, Chrysler took your tax money and mine so it could develop a car that costs more than one-and-a-half times the median annual American income in order to sell it to well-to-do alleged adult human beings who spend much of their free time playing a hyper-violent video game. Can you say, "professional athletes?" I KNEW you could! By the way, I seriously doubt that anyone with a highly pretentious name like Olivier Francois would ever be caught dead doing something as lowbrow as playing Call of Duty video games.

Have you never had the "pleasure" of playing one of the Call of Duty games (I haven't), the image above of a modern city being blasted to pieces is a screen shot from it. Not that I don't have my own guilty pleasures, but none of them have ever filled me with a burning desire to go out and buy an outrageously expensive car to advertise the fact that I have too much money and not enough brains.

Worse yet as far as real world effects on our dwindling oil supplies go, according to the Department of Energy this new $40,000 monstrosity will get exactly 17 MPG in the city and 21 MPG highway. I hate to break it to the many delusional souls who will no doubt rush out to be one of the first to own one of these hideous abominations, but when the gasoline supplies run out in the not-too-distant future, you are not going to be the badass hunter, but rather the sitting duck hunted. Because in real life, the game is played for keepsies.

14 Car and Truck Models to be Discontinued Next Year

Though car sales in the U.S. have stabilized after their dramatic fall during the early stages of the Great Recession, it is obvious that automakers are still feeling the effects. What’s more, it is liable to get worse as the effects of the end of the cheap-oil era continue to grow. One indicator of this is how many car models have been disappearing in recent years. In some instances, whole lines like Pontiac have fallen by the wayside.

So here comes a story from Yahoo News spelling out the latest models which will no longer be produced. The only model I have recent experience driving as my office has a couple for business use is this one:

Chevrolet HHR - Once upon a time Chrysler took a boring small car (the Neon), grafted a body that recalled 1930s-era roadsters on top of it and created the PT Cruiser. Seeing Chrysler's initial success, GM copied Chrysler's play step by step — hiring the PT Cruiser's designer to draw a body meant to evoke the 1930s-era Suburbans and using the chassis of the compact Cobalt sedan. Imitation may be flattery at its most sincere, but GM didn't copy Chrysler's sales; the HHR was big and cheap but thirsty, and like the PT never received enough updates to stay current — although the supercharged SS version ranks as one of the best modern sleepers available.

Personally, the HHR is a hideous vehicle that never should have passed through the design stage. The windshield is tiny and the weird configuration of the front seat and my somewhat above-average height meant that the driver’s side sun visor is at eye-level. Trust me, I won’t miss them. For that matter I also don't miss PT Cruisers, which were discontinued a couple of years ago.

Here are the other 13 on the list;

Buick Lucerne

Ford Crown Victoria (oh noes—there goes the CLASSIC police car!)

Cadillac DTS & STS (seriously, who other than senior citizens and pimps still drive Cadillacs?)

Dodge Dakota

Ford Ranger

Honda Element (gets my vote for the UGLIEST car currently on the road)

Lotus Elise (I’m not sure if I’ve ever even SEEN one of these)

Mazda RX-8

Mitsubishi Eclipse & Endeavor (I didn’t realize Mitsubishi was still a going concern)

Volvo S40 & S50 (my wife had a Volvo. Very dependable, except that every accessory was prone to breaking at a HUGE cost to repair)


Bonus: I just couldn't resist!

What Do the Working Poor Need? More Cars!

Stop the presses! I have officially found the winning entry for the year's foremost example of sheer mainstream media idiocy, personal finance category.

First let me set the table on this one. It is an obvious fact that public transportation in America is woefully inadequate. Unless you live in one of the larger cities, you may well not have any access to such transportation, and even most of the larger cities lack anything as basic as a subway system. Moreover, owning and operating a personal vehicle is a huge drain on the finances of anyone who earns less than the median per capita income of just over $26,000 per year.

No doubt this is a persistent problem for the working poor, who must somehow get to their jobs, go shopping for food and necessities and get their kids off to school every day. A common sense solution would be to do a major overhaul and expansion of our public transportation system, expensive as that would be. But common sense be damned, the Los Angeles Times has a better idea, give those poor people cars:

For more than a century, efforts to help the disadvantaged have focused on education, healthcare, nutrition and housing. Almost nothing has been done to help the working poor afford cars, despite research that indicates it would help alleviate poverty.

About 1 in 4 needy U.S. families do not have a car, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. That's a serious handicap for the millions of Americans who don't have access to robust mass transit.

A nationwide survey of 353 people who bought cars with help from a nonprofit group called Ways to Work found that 72% reported an increase in income. Of those who were on public assistance when they acquired a car, 87% were no longer receiving it a few years later.

Other studies have found that low-income people were more involved in community activities and had better access to healthcare after getting cars, while their children participated more frequently in after-school programs.

"You're more likely to have a job and less likely to be fired," said Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who studies transportation and poverty. "It's just a no-brainer that low-income families need cars."

Not to be churlish or anything, but UCLA professor Evelyn Blumenburg is a shining example of why America's educational system is deteriorating so rapidly. No, professor, it is NOT a "no-brainer" that these families need cars. It IS, however, a no-brainer that they need access to an adequate public transportation system.

I would sure like to know exactly when the alleged "studies" that show low-income people being better off after getting cars were conducted. In the summer of 2008 or this past year when gas prices shot far above $3.00 a gallon? Or perhaps, as I suspect, back when gasoline was still cheap? Because maybe you haven't noticed this, professor, being stuck up their in your ivory tower and all, but conditions on the ground in the real world have changed dramatically these past few years.

Even more asinine is this little nugget:

Yet there are almost no state or federal programs to meet the need.

The U.S. Transportation Department plans to spend $71 billion this fiscal year on roads and bridges, $22 billion on public transit and more than $8 billion on rail projects, but has allocated no money to help put the poor behind the wheel.

Under the Community Reinvestment Act, the Federal Reserve encourages banks to provide loans to struggling farmers, disadvantaged people hoping to buy homes and small businesses that want to expand — but not to people who need cars to work.

Wow--that is the first time I have ever seen it advocated that it is the federal government's responsibility to make sure people have cars. That is really taking fuzzy-headed, business-as-usual thinking to a whole new level.

But wait, it gets even more absurd. Here is a surreal quote from once of our so-called "leaders" as to why it is better to enable poor people to buy cars than to spend the money on public transportation:

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) has tried for years to get the government to help the poor buy cars. In 2005 and again in 2007, she sponsored legislation to provide $50 million a year for low-income car ownership programs. Both bills died in committee.

She said she has faced resistance from, among others, environmental organizations that insist mass transit is a better solution.

"Public transit is not practical in Milwaukee where the wind chill can be 45 below and you have to drop three kids off at day care," Moore said. "We really have a crisis with respect to getting people to their jobs."

See why we can't have public transportation? Because it's COLD outside sometimes. Geez, why didn't I think of that? I'm such a heartless bastard.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a town not that far away from Milwaukee, and as a child actually had to WALK over a mile to school (what a concept!). And guess what? On those blustery, below-zero winter mornings, well goddam if my mom, instead of coddling me by driving me to school, simply made sure I had on a heavy winter jacket, boots, a scarf and a stocking hat. And I survived! And I didn't even ONCE get frostbite!

I swear I read this article this morning and my head almost exploded. It would have been one thing had this breathtakingly idiotic drivel been published a decade ago when gasoline was still $1.20 a gallon. But now it is nearly three times that price and is only going to go higher over the long term. And that doesn't even include the soaring cost of vehicle maintenance these days, or the rapid deterioration of America's bridges and highways. If the working poor are having trouble being able to afford to keep a car running now, they are going to find it well nigh impossible when gasoline rises to $4.00, $5.00 and even more in the coming years.

I hate to say this, folks, but this kind of thinking, which has not abated one little bit despite the recent major oil price shocks, is exactly why I am convinced that the collapse of the American economy is a foregone conclusion.

More Evidence of U.S. Infrastructure Collapse: 3,538 Bridges Closed in 2010

image: the Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky...closed indefinitely.

I haven't yet written much about the rapid deterioration of America's car-centric infrastructure, so I thought I'd remedy the situation by calling your attention to a very good article from Bloomberg this week on the subject:

Jim Benton, a Jeffersonville, Indiana, jewelry-store owner, says sales fell 40 percent in two weeks after the Sherman Minton Bridge connecting his border community to customers in Kentucky closed Sept. 9.

Fifteen miles from the bridge’s Kentucky side, officials at United Parcel Service Inc.’s Worldport, the world’s largest automated package-handling facility, say they’ve used software to reroute trucks with no substantial impact. That’s not so easy for Benton, who said he’s keeping longer hours and buying less merchandise for the holiday season.

Benton’s plight is playing out for small businesses across the U.S., where 3,538 bridges were closed in 2010, as customers shop elsewhere rather than take detours. With the average U.S. bridge seven years from the end of its useful life, and one-fourth of 600,000 crossings classified by regulators as “structurally deficient,” more places will be hurt by closings, said Barry LePatner, founder of LePatner & Associates LLP, a New York-based construction law and consulting firm.

Let me repeat the most important factoid from that last paragraph so that everyone recognizes the full implications of its meaning: the average U.S. bridge is a mere SEVEN YEARS from the end of its useful life. Sounds like we're facing an imminent collapse of the entire system, doesn't it?

So, you might ask, how much in the hole are we, cost-wise, as far as correcting this problem?

The average U.S. bridge is 43 years old, while the average useful life is generally about 50 years, according to the highway agency. The agency said in 2006 that it would cost $140 billion to immediately repair every deficient bridge in the U.S. That’s more than three times what the U.S. government receives in taxes annually to pay for road, mass transit and bridge projects.

Given the above, how exactly did we manage to borrow and spend $700 billion on President Hopey-Changey's utterly futile Recovery Act without correcting this problem? Wasn't all of that loot supposed to have been invested in "shovel ready" projects? You don't suppose it was because it is more profitable for corporate America to build new roadways rather than to repair old ones, do you? Gawd, you're such a cynic.

All we've managed to do is run the federal deficit up to unsustainable levels without fixing the problem. As Scott Adams once wrote in his Dilbert comic strip: "don't step in the leadership."

This is just another way that Obama has been a colossal disaster for the nation that elected him. It was bad enough to place the country far more deeply in debt trying to sustain our unsustainable car-centric economic model. It's far worse that the money was spent so incompetently.


Bonus: sorry, I couldn't resist.

Government Motors Runs an Advertisment Making Fun of Cyclists

Boy, I sure am glad we taxpayers bailed out GM so it could turn around and run stupid ass advertisements like the one above. Here's the Los Angeles Times with the details:

General Motors Co. is killing an advertisement aimed at college students after receiving complaints that it makes fun of people who use bicycles for transportation.

That ad has a headline stating, “reality sucks” and depicts a nerdy looking guy wearing a helmet and riding a bicycle being passed by a cute young woman in the passenger seat of a car. It then goes on to say, “Stop pedaling … start driving” and provides information about discount pricing for GM products such as the new 2012 Chevrolet Sonic subcompact sedan and the giant GMC Sierra 1500 truck.

The ad ran in a variety of college newspapers and was turned into a poster that was displayed campuses, according to the automaker.

The advertisement was widely panned on a variety of cycling blogs and in complaints to the company.

So why would GM produce an ad like this in the first place? For the same reason that the company is still building SUVs and big ass pick-'em-up trucks even as the cheap oil and gasoline era is rapidly drawing to a close: because the company is run by a bunch of morons.

Fear and Loathing in the Auto Industry: The Flacks Can’t See What’s Right in Front of Their Eyes

One of the most shortsighted policies enacted by our so-called “leaders” in response to the financial crisis was the bailout of the automobile industry. The end of the cheap oil era and the onset of the world wide peak in oil production means that the long term trend in gasoline prices is heading in one direction: up. Additionally, the economic devastation the crisis has wrought among so many working and middle class Americans means that many will likely never again purchase a new car during their lifetimes. For those of us who are Peak Oil aware, these are accepted facts that are beyond dispute.

So it was with great interest yesterday that I read an article from Fortune magazine entitled, “The Incredible Shrinking Auto Boom.” I actually got excited for a second, thinking that maybe this was an example of a mainstream media publication actually beginning to report our true predicament. How silly I was. Nevertheless, things started off promisingly:

Fears of a global recession, brought on by slowing China growth and financial panic in Europe, are dampening hopes for a strong U.S. recovery in auto sales.

That could have consequences that ripple far beyond Detroit, Wolfsburg, and Toyota City.

Ummm…yup. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should have been able to foresee that, please continue:

Until very recently, autos have been holding up as one of the few bright spots in U.S. manufacturing. New assembly plants are opening and automakers are adding to their payrolls. Autoworkers have entertained visions of fat profit-sharing checks as they concluded contract negotiations with GM and continue them at Chrysler.

What’s amazing about the quote above is how quickly Americans seemed to forget about the oil price spike of 2008, and started buying new cars again as soon as gas prices plummeted in the wake of demand destruction caused by the effects of the Great Recession. The chart above shows that auto sales WERE starting to recover. Apparently, though, none of the optimists were taking note of the fact that gasoline prices began to relentlessly march upwards again late last year, or perhaps they might have dampened their enthusiasm. It is on exactly this point that the author of this article, who has the unfortunately aristocratic sounding name of Alex Taylor III, really demonstrates his stupidity:

As recently as April 25th, I wrote approvingly about anew forecast from IHS Global Insight that had car sales under one scenario climbing steeply to 17 million by 2015. It foresaw a healthy economy expanding at roughly 3% per year and creating two million new jobs annually. Its reasoning was that years of below-average sales would create pent-up demand that must be satisfied as long as automobiles remain a primary mode of transportation.

Wow…talk about an example of why you should never; EVER take financial advice from a mainstream media publication. According to my buddies at GasBuddy.com, the average price of a gallon of gasoline on April 25th, the very day Sir Alex Taylor III wrote his unfortunate bit of optimistic prognostication, was around $3.85, a mere quarter from its all time high in the summer of 2008. Was Alex Taylor III completely asleep during that whole time and does he really not recall how the financial system imploded less than two months after they hit their peak that year?

I guess, being a Senior Editor at Large for Fortune magazine (a title which kind of makes him sound like a bank robber on the lam), Mr. Taylor III doesn’t get out much. Or at least, he doesn’t get out much to neighborhoods where people actually work for a living. If he did, he might recognize that working and middle class Americans are struggling with layoffs, bankruptcy, foreclosures and related maladies, and hardly have the excess spending money to be able to afford to run annual auto sales back up into the 17 million range.

As the article continues, Mr. Taylor III actually interviews another, more “pessimistic” analyst:

Independent analyst Warren Browne of Automotive Compass has been figuring on 2011 sales coming in around 12.5 million since February. Based on some new work he has done that ties auto sales to GDP growth, he sees 2012 sales stalling at 13.2 million. He's assuming annual GDP growth of only 2.5% for the rest of the decade and autos not peaking in the current economic cycle until 2019.

"The current automotive cycle is operating below trend," Browne writes. "There is not enough economic support to alter this path for at least a few years.

You see the problem? Even when these people are supposedly being realistic, they still don’t have a clue what the fuck they are talking about. Annual GDP growth of 2.5% for the rest of the decade? Auto sales peaking in 2019, when worldwide oil production will likely already be in steep decline from today’s levels? Sorry, Mr. Browne, we’ll be lucky if there still IS an American auto industry by 2019.

Reading this article served as a good reminder just how pervasive business-as-usual thinking is despite all of the mounting evidence that we have reached a key turning point in our history in which economic growth is finished. The likes of Alex Taylor III and Warren Browne will no doubt continue to spew their nonsense until the day finally comes that they lose their own jobs and reality finally pierces the media bubble of their own creation.

The Automobile Claimed its First American Life 112 Years Ago Today

I ran across this interesting tidbit posted by a fellow blogger today:

Henry Bliss, a Manhattan real-estate salesman, became the first American to die by car more than a century ago on this day. Wired offers a fuller account of how a taxi hit him and "knocked him unconscious, crushing his skull and chest" in 1899. Bliss died by the next morning, and the driver was initially charged with manslaughter, though the charges were dropped.

I say interesting because it serves as a reminder of how relatively brief the age of the automobile has been. No invention of man has been as responsible for dramatically altering the physical landscape, particularly here in America. And yet, because of Peak Oil, the auto age is going to prove to be very brief indeed. My personal estimate is that within 20 years, nobody but the very rich will still own private autos, and by midcentury the only cars remaining will be rusted hulks littering the powered down landscape.

Oh well. Despite all of the environmental damage they have caused and the continuing carnage on the roadways, of which the unfortunately named Mr. Bliss was merely the first of millions of victims, it was actually kind of fun while it lasted.