Author: Eric Peters

Law enforcers aren’t “heroes”  . . .  but what about firemen? Are they Hose Heroes? People are pressured to regard them as such. Much as they are pressured to genuflect, North Korean funeral-style, before the Presence of a law enforcer. You are probably forced to pay for fire “services” in your community. Just as you are forced to “help” pay for law enforcement – even if you yourself feel no need for either service and would rather opt-out, if that choice were available to you. But of course, you have no such choice. Instant Access to Current Spot Prices & Interactive Charts … Continue reading →

The post Hose Heroes? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Desperation brings out the worst in people – including engineers. But then, you can’t really fault them. The government issues its fatwas – which aren’t suggestions – and it is the job of the engineers to figure out ways to comply with the fatwas. Hence, the becoming commonplace use of turbochargers and direct injection. Neither makes much sense except as measures to achieve compliance with federal fatwas, chiefly the one ululating that every new car must average at least 35.5 MPG and if not, its manufacturer will be caned in the public square. Well, financially caned – via deliberately punitive … Continue reading →

The post Desperate Solutions to Made-up Problems appeared first on LewRockwell.

For planned obsolescence to work, you’ve got to keep the conveyor belt rolling. And most of all, prevent anyone from getting off. It is a problem if people “cling” to their old cars instead of regularly trading them in – ideally, to be crushed – for new ones – hopefully, heavily financed. But how to get rid of the old cars when people decline to get rid of them voluntarily? Democratic politicians in Oregon have just the thing. It is House Bill 2877 and – if it becomes law – it will impose heavy taxes on cars 20 years old or more … Continue reading →

The post Taxing Them Off the Road appeared first on LewRockwell.

You make the rules, we’ll find new ways around them. That could be AMG’s motto and maybe is . . . unofficially. The Rhinoceros Thing you see before you is somehow fully compliant with every government reg; and yet… well, just look at it. Al Gore does not approve. But it’s all – for the moment – perfectly legal. There is nothing they – the short-haired termagants at EPA and the beetle-like killjoys at NHTSA – can do to stop you from buying one or Mercedes (via AMG, Benz’s in-house high-performance skunkworks) from building it. Why are the most advertised Gold … Continue reading →

The post German Engineers Outsmart DC Bureaucrats appeared first on LewRockwell.

The car press has become the propaganda ministry of entities and individuals who either know nothing about cars or who loathe cars. Whichever it is, the end result is the same: The writing of serially dishonest stories (and that ancient journalistic term is most apt) that anyone who does know something about cars – even if he loathes them – would notice immediately. Example: “The cost to implement tough fuel efficiency standards for cars imposed by the Obama Administration for the first half of the decade could be up to 40 percent lower than previously estimated using existing conventional technologies, … Continue reading →

The post Brock Yates, Phone Home appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s a good time to be a repo man. . . again. Lots of business picking up used cars people stopped making payments on. According to S&P Global Ratings and an article in Bloomberg News, defaults on these subprime loans are at their highest water mark since the subprime collapse of 2008 and the “recovery rate” – what the lender ends up recouping of the original debt principle – is a mere 34.8 percent. It’s a lot of money flushed. But how is it that cars – all of them, not just the used ones – bleed value this quickly … Continue reading →

The post Subprime on Wheels appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Clovers are aghast that Trump is threatening to do the unimaginable – and stop threatening the car companies with federal fuel economy fatwas (and add-on fatwas forbidding or restricting how much plant food – carbon dioxide – cars may emit). He appears to be entertaining the horrible idea that the people who buy cars ought to be free to decide for themselves how much fuel economy matters to them – since they will be the ones paying for both the car and the gas. And – oh my god! – that this is really none of the business of the … Continue reading →

The post Trump Thinks Your Car’s Gas Mileage Is Your Business appeared first on LewRockwell.

New cars are – supposedly – “safer” than ever. Right? That’s what the government has been telling us. Each new fatwa – backup cameras, tire pressure monitors, all those airbags – forced down our throats accompanied by the ululations of the regulatory ayatollahs that they would make cars . . . safer. But then the news. Motor vehicle fatalities are suddenly going up. And not just a little bit, either. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety (there it is, again!) Administration, motor vehicle fatalities are up by 8 percent – and that’s for 2015, the most recent year for which … Continue reading →

The post If Cars Are So Safe Thanks to the Gov’t appeared first on LewRockwell.

New cars are – supposedly – “safer” than ever. Right? That’s what the government has been telling us. Each new fatwa – backup cameras, tire pressure monitors, all those airbags – forced down our throats accompanied by the ululations of the regulatory ayatollahs that they would make cars . . . safer. But then the news. Motor vehicle fatalities are suddenly going up. And not just a little bit, either. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety (there it is, again!) Administration, motor vehicle fatalities are up by 8 percent – and that’s for 2015, the most recent year for which … Continue reading →

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About four months from now, Americans will go through the sickly, depressing ritual of celebrating the liberties they no longer enjoy. This includes, among an almost infinite number of things now malum prohibitum (that is, illegal, a violation of some law or statute, but entailing no harm done) being free to hire someone to give them a ride at a price mutually agreeable and otherwise acceptable to both parties. The government – that is, the busybodies-with-guns who are the government – consider this sort of peaceful, voluntary transaction between consenting adults, neither of them complaining, to be intolerable because it … Continue reading →

The post Viva Uber appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are plenty of good reasons to buy a new car. . . and just as many good reasons to buy a used one. Also, there are some not-so-great things about buying a new car – and exactly the same goes for buying used. In between somewhere lies the balance. If you decide on new, you won’t have to worry about the car. That is probably the biggest tangible upside. A new car is new; it has zero miles – so no wear and tear. And it is completely warranted, tires to roof.  If anything turns out to be wrong with it, … Continue reading →

The post The Ancient Car Debate appeared first on LewRockwell.

In several objective ways, new cars are less “safe” than cars built decades ago. A strong statement. One that probably seems ridiculous, too, given all the “safety” features new cars have that old cars did not – and also given the fact that new cars must pass a battery of crash tests before they may legally be sold to the public. But “safety” is a slippery thing. An analogy may help get the point across. Battleships were considered virtually invulnerable; they had armor belts more than a foot thick in some cases. Then came naval aviation. And the air-dropped torpedo. … Continue reading →

The post If Safety Mattered appeared first on LewRockwell.

The other day, I was visiting my friend’s repair shop. He was working on a late 1980s Subaru wagon. I  noticed it had 13-inch wheels and four-lug hubs. You never see this anymore. That’s too bad. The smallest wheel/tire you’ll find a new car riding on is a 15-incher. My ’76 Trans-Am, a big (and heavy) muscle car also has 15×7 wheels. But it is a muscle car. Large (for its time) wheels and fat tires made sense because it has a big V8 and lots of power and you need as much traction as possible to keep it all … Continue reading →

The post Automotive Inanities appeared first on LewRockwell.

What’s the first thing that happens after a bad relationship ends? A new relationship begins. Sometimes, not quite before the old/bad one has entirely ended. Often, without much though about the consequences of decisions made in the heat of the moment. It’s interesting to think about all that as word arrives about GM’s apparent decision to dump its European Opel subsidiary (which appears to be having a down-low affair with Peugeot) in order to refocus its declining vigor on the U.S. market, where it continues to bleed market share like an old tire with a slow leak. Current Prices on … Continue reading →

The post Governmentalized GM appeared first on LewRockwell.

Renting is a much better deal than buying . . . for the landlord. You – the renter – never own anything. But you pay for everything. Forever. This appears to be GM’s view of the future of cars, which it plans to rent to you rather than sell to you. It’s actually sound policy – for GM – given the cost of new cars (not just GM’s) as well as the declining affection for cars, especially among those in the 35 and younger bracket – many of whom aren’t interested in ever owning a car but occasionally need one. GM launched … Continue reading →

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