The thing is, the Prius craze is also ridiculous and faddish. It’s a terrible car that’s selling like hotcakes because people think buying one makes them virtuous and good, when in fact it just makes them exactly the same sort of marketing-guff-believing herd-followers as the people who thought a Hummer would make them manly. It doesn’t get anything like the magical fuel mileage the manufacturers tout, it’s got more things on it to go wrong than a normal car, it’s a technological dead end, and its safety record is, to put it charitably, uninspiring. Driving a Prius is an ostentatious announcement that you’re nobly enduring a lousy car in order to be ecologically conscious and supportive of alternative technologies when it is, in fact, neither. If the bulk of SUVs are costume jewelry, the Prius is an Armani hairshirt.

(What I find really hilarious, though, are the new vehicles that are hitting showrooms lately which pander to both fads at the same time. These supposed hybrid SUVs – I mean, seriously? Who does anybody think they’re fooling with those?)

As for point 3, I think what you have there is a car dealer having found a creative new way to screw people on trade-in. This is not exactly film-at-11 territory.

Still, you do have a point. I don’t think the situation is anywhere near as dire as we’re being told, but in a way, that’s what annoys me. The SUV thing needed to die anyway, simply because it was stupid, but that’s no reason to let it take down other segments with it. And no, I don’t believe that the really high-performance automobile will ever completely disappear, but then, I’m not really concerned about the very far right-hand end of the bell curve.

What worries me is the contraction of the middle of the market. If the trend continues as it’s going now, we’ll end up with a world where there are basically three kinds of cars: ultra-expensive, super-high-end sports cars; ultra-expensive, super-high-end luxury cars; and slow, boring crap. And I just don’t see the need for it. I can’t accept that we’ve come this far as a technological society just to relegate one of our best inventions to the status of “dull plastic box for going to the supermarket in” for the bulk of the population.

1) SUVs and Hummers aren’t moving off new car lots like they used to.

2) Priuses are back order for 2 or more months.

3) Sharp increase in people trying to trade in less fuel efficient models. One car dealer says he deducts $200 off trade ins each time a barrel of oil increases by $1.

4) Ebay now lists more than a hundred town cars an limosines from companies trying to lighten their fleet, when there are typically on about 10 or so at anyone time.

Some of these may be knee jerk reactions, I’m sure. But if oil and gas prices continue to climb (though oil may slip back to under $100 a barrel by the end of the year), demand for fuel effiecent vehicles will increase. The big car manufacturers will have to retool or face even more losses.

The car companies will still produce high performance vehicles, as I first said. They always have, regardless of what their “bread and butter” models were. But producing fewer for lack of demand will make them even more expensive. There has always been a demand for such vehicles, although it may become more a niche market as fewer people will be able to afford them.

What I resent, and what I see more and more of in the future, is the growing cultural expectation that that’s all we’re all interested in – or at least all we’re going to get, regardless of interest. You (and now I am not using the royal “you”) say the future economics aren’t there for today’s performance vehicles; I’m not sure I buy that – in fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t – but let’s say for argument’s sake that I do. Even if that is in fact the case, I think some of the 21st century’s vast technological might should be directed toward fixing the future economics of high-performance motoring. This is as opposed to the current development strategy, which seems to be almost entirely geared toward cowering before said economics instead.

Besides the politics of oil, we have increased demand from China and India, a weak dollar, and commodity speculation driving up the price, a very different situtaion than 20 or 30 years ago. With a limited resource such as oil, can you imagine just the economic effects if the two most populous countries (more than 3 billion people?) want cars the way the US does? The price of gas may slide back 50 cents by the end of summer, but the trend is clear for every incerasing prices.

We have yet to decide what is “adequate performance” as a nation. I’m not sure what all qualifies as a “real car” but get the feeling from reading above that anything that isn’t a performance vehicle isn’t a real car. (I’m guessing Echos, Civics, Rios fall into this?) I know driving is so ingrained into the American psyche that it’s almost considered a freedom akin to those in the Bill of Rights. It is exhilarating driving a perfomance vehicle, but the future economics just isn’t there. Most people will want an affordable way to get back and forth to work and the market and will sacrifice a “rev or two” for economy. Or they will just do without.

But I don’t think anyone has to worry about losing cars that can give a rev or two. I suspect even performance vehicles will always be available, but at a premium.

Anyhow, the situation is different now than in the times you described. As world’s booming economies demand more oil, it’s getting harder to find and extract especially now that countries are nationalizing their resources and squeezing out major corporations. So the push for alternative technologies isn’t here just due to environmental concerns, but from a simple fact that we have to figure out ways to transition from oil eventually if we want to avoid major conflicts.

(For those who don’t know, I drive a 2006 Dodge Charger R/T Daytona.)