Reader Question: The Not-Mustang?

Here’s the latest reader question, along with my reply!

Scott asks:  I love your columns and wondered when you might comments on the newest example of Detroit’s green idiocracy, the e-Mustang. I saw a commercial for it last Saturday during the Ohio State football game. It has to be the ugliest as well as Ford’s dumbest idea since the Mustang 2. This will be the biggest flop since the New Coke and the Harley Davidson e-bike Live Wire. Talk about not knowing your audience. A Mustang w/ no V8 thunder and sans the wonderful odor of gasoline? Why bother! My very first car in 1974 was a 1966 Mustang 289. What a car it was. I still miss it. It is tragic what has become of Detroit iron. Keep up the good work!

My reply: I already have – see here!

To expand on it a bit more:  Ford believes its audience is  . . . transitioning. The older crowd who grew up with V8s (and gas) and without dey sail fawns may not be interested much in a $40,000 sail fawn called “Mustang”  . . . but the younger crowd who did grow up with sail fawns and strapped into ssssssssaaaaaaaaaaafety seats and marinated in “concern” about the “climate crisis” may be very interested.

That they’re unable to afford it, of course, is where Ford has got a real problem on its hands.

The rest of the industry, too.

No one seems to want to discuss how average people – not the small number of affluent people who can afford to virtue signal – are going to absorb an increase in their cost to drive of around 30-50 percent.

It is one thing to sell a relative handful of pricey cars – whether electric or not. It is quite another thing to sell a large number of pricey cars – whether electric or not.

They can’t extend financing much farther than it has already been extended – because of depreciation, which applies to EVs just as much (and even more so) than it does to any other car.

So unless the government is going to give the masses  a 30-50 percent voucher/tax credit to offset the price of their new EV, most people will not be able to afford a new EV.

And when all that’s available are EVs, most people will no longer be able to afford to drive.

And that’s what it’s all about.

. . .

Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!