Well said!!!!

 

So, what is the fix? There are 180 million non-commercial vehicles registered in the US and Toyo/Honda/etc are struggling to produce .5 million hybrids a year.

Back in the 70s, high gas prices resulted in the value of gas guzzlers to plummet. Which resulted in a win-fall for the working poor to buy cheap transportation. That worked out then since gas prices came back down.
Where I live mass transit is almost non-existent. So $10/g gas will have the biggest impact on the those who can least afford it. Hummer owners will either continue to fill them or bite their lip and trade "up" to a hybrid.

 

Trust me on this -- most of those that bought a hummer don't care about what gas costs, and some of them will not even know what it costs.

My problem is not with "those who have it flaunting it", rather it is the fact that they don't give a d**n about the planet, the environment, energy conservation or any other socially responsible action.

So even go so far as to advertise that fact with their bumper stickers and personalized license plates.

I don't know how we do it, but we need a way to tax the bejesus out of environmental and social abuse.

If we can't find a way, these people and their "me first and only" attitudes will eventually kill the planet, including themselves and us. Then and only then will they cry about "why wasn't something done to prevent this?". I suspect many of them already know these things....

The sad part is that even with that knowledge they still don't care.

 

Some pretty sweeping generalizations being made in here. Honestly I cannot condemn anyone based on something they drive.
There are plenty of people driving hybrids simply for the gas savings, could not care less about the environment. So to turn that around and say that someone who drives a Hummer must be a certain way is too far for me to even consider.

 

I just feel sorry for folks who bought the H2 & H3 thinking they were getting a Real Hummer (as in H1 type). The H2/3 bears as much relation to an H1 as a Ferrari body kit car that sits on a VW Beetle chassis relates to a real Ferrari. Yeah, it looks a little like a Hummer, but that's about it.

 

So true Matt,

But it still had the "look at me" and the "I'm better than you" factor for many...

I think that this was FAR more important to many than how similar it was to the H1!

08FEH

 

How many have said that about Hybrid drivers? Judge lest you be judged. Time for us to show some class....there are a lot of people hurting right now.

It MAY be their own fault or that of society but so are many other things, smoking, drinking, drug use, teen pregnancy (unplanned pregnancy) aids, poverty....why don't we start casting stones at them to, after all, we made the right choice and it is certainly THEIR fault they did not make the same exact choices as us.


By the way, I do get the parody re the EV-1, and while I do regard that as a mistake by GM, those cars were NEVER owned, the owner called them back and did what they saw fit with them, Just the same as Honda will do with the hydrogen cars when they are done with their testing....Hummers, otoh are owned and people are stuck with them.

 

I'm curious to know if you think the banks are the ones at fault for the current mortgage crisis too??

 

Crushing is a bit extreme, after all GM and hummer owners are having a hard enough time.

The day of the large high aero drag vehicle is over though.

GM's talking about selling the hummer division, but I think it's best to just let it go the way of the Olds

 

Plenty of blame to go around.

To a significant degree, yes the mortgage lenders should be at the head of the line. The risk managers f****d up their jobs, and allowed approval of loans with drug-induced ratios and property valuations to far too many folks with no substantiation of income to support the end-game payments. The aggregators and securitization resellers were less than honest about the risk profiles of the mortgage-backed securities. The mortgage brokers, in a significant percentage of cases, lied through their teeth about the clients and about the properties so they'd get their commissions, with few facing any realistic consequences for their actions from the mortgage originators.
And, like in most bubbles, very few factored in the probability of value reductions that come with bubbles bursting. Very similar events happened in the mid 80's (different cause, though - tax law changes changed value props of a bunch of properties, along with the oil patch collapse) that also led to insolvency of a bunch of mortgage originators.