Making Cars – and Trucks – Affordable Again

Donald Trump’s promise to make American Great Again could easily be delivered on by making cars – and trucks – affordable again. The word “easily” is italicized because it could be just that. Because affordable cars – and trucks – are already being made.

It is merely a matter of allowing them to be sold.

Here, that is.

For instance, the 2024 Toyota HiLux Champ. It is a basic – a stripped down – version of the Tacoma pickup Toyota is allowed to sell here that stickers for $31,500 to start. The HiLux Champ stickers for about $13k to start. But Toyota is not allowed to sell it here.

There are several reasons why the HiLux only costs about a third as much as a Tacoma, including that it does not come standard with a turbocharged four cylinder engine augmented by a hybrid tandem drivetrain – or an automatic transmission. It comes standard with a manual transmission. And it’s available with a diesel engine. Neither of which are available in the 2024 Tacoma Americans are allowed to buy.

But there is only one reason why the Champ is not legal to sell here:

It is not compliant.

This does not mean it is not safe. Nor that it pollutes.

The distinction is very important. It is key to making America great again. Because America cannot be great again until this business of framing “non-compliant” as something bad and thus in need of not being allowed is utterly discredited. Of a piece with discrediting that recent business of not allowing “asymptomatic spreaders” into stores without a “mask” over their faces. 

This “compliant” equals “safe” – and “clean” – is the bait-and-switch the regulatory apparat has used for decades to make life more expensive for Americans and thus America less and less great. Before all of this regulating – and the need for all this complying – trucks cost less than most cars and most Americans could afford to buy full-size cars with V8 engines.

This was not as long ago as the ’70s, incidentally.

It was a recently as about 13 years ago.

Back in 2011, an American could still  buy a full-sized, rear-wheel-drive sedan with a V8 engine – the Ford Crown Victoria – for about $30,000. Today, something that fits that description stickers for about $100,000 – and $30,000 will buy you a much smaller, mid-sized car with a four cylinder engine augmented by a hybrid-electric tandem drivetrain.

The only reason for this transition is the need to comply with the latest regulations emanating from the regulatory apparat. These have nothing to do with “safety,” by the way – and this is easy to prove.

A Mercedes S-Class sedan that was made the same year that the last Ford Crown Victoria was made would, if it were made today, not be compliant with the latest “safety” regulations.

Not because it isn’t safe to drive – or to be within in the event of a crash. It would in fact be among the very safest places to be within, in the event of a crash – because a 2011 Mercedes S-Class is built like a tank.

A 2011 model would also be equipped with air bags for everyone.

It also came standard with a V8. The 2024 version comes standard with a six.

But the ’11 S550 would not be  . . . compliant – per 2024 model year standards. And all that means is it does not exactly conform to every penny-ante regulation imposed on vehicles since 2011. It does not mean a 2011 Mercedes S-Class is an accident waiting to happen. It certainly does not mean a 2011 S-Class is less able to withstand impact forces in a crash than a compliant 2024 model year Honda Civic.

But that is precisely what the regulatory apparat wants you to believe. More finely, the apparatchiks want you to believe they are keeping you safe (and keeping pollution at bay) because that is how they justify the never-ending, always-increasing compliance regime.

And their jobs.

They cannot admit the job is done – as regards vehicle exhaust emissions, which ceased being a legitimate problem more than 30 years ago – and they cannot ever allow the public to understand the distinction between compliant and “safe,” because that is the tool of mental manipulation they have to have in order to get people to accept why they are not allowed to have the opportunity to buy a $13,000 brand-new truck like the 2024 Toyota Hilux Champ.

It is not a “safe” truck.

It “emits” too much “pollution.”

If you believe this, you may have also believed the drugs the government came just shy of forcing everyone to take were “safe” – and “effective.”

Hopefully, you no longer believe it.

Driving a new HiLux Champ – assuming you were allowed – would be no more dangerous than driving a 2011 model year Mercedes S-Class in that neither vehicle has a design defect that causes them to them handle erratically or unpredictably or some other such thing that could result in loss of control and an accident. The brakes work. The wheels are not prone to randomly coming off. They are simply – wait for it – not “compliant.”

Well, so was I – during the “pandemic.”

It’s all bullshit. Say it as Arnold used to, before he became a sad old woman (or revealed that he was always one).

There is no legitimate reason for barring affordable vehicles like the HiLux from entering the U.S.market. There is only . . . bullshit. Federal regulatory bullshit, for its own sake. For the sake of the make-work of the federal bureaucracy. And once he is formally the president, Trump could end it.

It would be literally as easy as signing an executive order.

He wants to make America great again? A great start – come January – would be to make new vehicles affordable again.

. . .

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