“I want to be a partner, a good partner, to help (the auto industry) transition to a clean energy future,” Hillary Clinton said Monday in unveiling her draconian 40 mpg mandate on the industry by 2020.
Then she tee-boned her new partner with the snide comment that engine technology had changed little since Model T’s started rolling off the assembly line. “In fact,” she said, “that Model T got better gas mileage than your typical SUV does today.”
The comment is revealing for the Left’s continued nostalgia for “the good ol’ days” of pre-modern America. It is also a convenient untruth.
Her misinformation apparently is sourced form those auto experts at the Sierra Club which claimed in a 2003 ad that the Model T got 25 mpg while the average SUV gets 18 mpg. Wrong, says Ford Motor: The typical Tin Lizzy got 15 mpg.
Furthermore, the Model T weighed just 1,200 pounds, lacked any safety equipment, and had a top speed of 45 mpg with a tailwind. Today’s SUVs weigh 4,200 pounds thanks in part to federally mandated bumpers, airbags, catalytic converters, roof-crush standards, side-impact steel bars, and so on – not to mention creature comforts like AC and heated leather seats.
When adjusted for all these amenities, a Ford SUV is 4.5 times as efficient as Henry Ford’s original.