One of the declarations kicked around in the post Sept. 11 rhetoric went something like this: “if we had a Manhattan Project-sized mandate to make fuel efficient cars and get us off of Middle East oil dependency, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Well, there was such a project in 1993…
Over the next 10 years, the U.S. government and the American auto industry would combine the full weight of their resources – billions of dollars, the best scientific minds and previously secret Cold War technologies – to build an invention simple in concept yet critical in importance: a family car that achieved 80 miles per gallon.
This “Supercar” not only would be a tremendous boon to the environment, reducing pollution and slowing global warming, but it also would cut the nation?s reliance on oil imports from the volatile Middle East and inject new life into a stagnating domestic auto industry.
But nine years after it was born in pomp and splendor, Supercar is dead.
The victim of bureaucratic turf wars, a hostile auto industry and self-serving politicians, the car that was supposed to change everything now stands as a sobering reminder of the forces arrayed against greater fuel efficiency and a cleaner environment.
Lost were years of effort, $1.5 billion in taxpayer money and perhaps the best opportunity the nation has had to address some of its most pressing issues.
The Chicago Tribune has the complete post-mortem.