Pickup owners say no to high fuel rating

The Cash for Clunkers program reminds me of the old saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

According to a report this week, that is what happened with the government's car subsidy program, which was originally intended to get older "gas hog" vehicles off the road and replace them with new fuel efficient vehicles.

The Associated Press reported the most common Cash for Clunkers deal was replacing old pickups with new pickups, gaining only very small improvements in fuel efficiency.

These weren't the smaller pickups that tend to get a little better mileage but the large ones.

Ford undoubtedly was happy that the most popular trade was the Ford F150 pickup for a new F150, indicating a lot of brand loyalty. There was also brand loyalty for Chevrolet and Dodge pickups with buyers replacing their old versions for new ones.

This confirms what I have noticed over the years, and that is that loyalty to pickup brands is pretty fierce, even more so than to cars. Once you are a Ford pickup person, or a Chevrolet or a Dodge owner, it seems to stick.

Of course, supporters of the Cash for Clunkers program - the original supporters - wanted vehicle owners to abandon their old, bad ways and buy high fuel efficiency small cars. The goal was to reduce dependence on oil products and reduce pollution.

Later, the program switched over to being mostly an auto industry stimulus program, but buyers were still required to replace their old vehicles with new ones that had higher mileage ratings.

And, according to the  AP analysis of the program, that did happen in most cases (there are still some unexplained exceptions), and overall the average fuel economy for the old vehicles was 15.8 mpg compared to 24.9 for the new ones.

But the increase in the case of full-size pickup buyers was negligible - a 1 to 3 mpg improvement - and there were lots of pickup buyers.  

The allure of fuel efficiency to buyers is over-rated in my view. Yes, there are people who put that as their number one priority - there were plenty of small, very fuel efficient vehicles sold during the program.

But people buy the vehicle they like, the one that fits their lifestyle. Pickup owners like pickups. SUV owners like SUVs. They will keep buying them as long as they can.

Could something change that? Perhaps. The government could always intervene in some way. And if gas prices stayed at a sustained high level, if might force a move to other vehicles. But it also might force truck makers to find ways to build more fuel efficiency into them, letting pickup loyalists continue to buy what they want.

For the present, pickups owners seem determined to continue to buy the vehicles they love, even if they are "gas hogs." I hope the day doesn't come when that freedom of choice is denied to them.

Terry Ross is director of the Yuma Sun's News and Information Center. E-mail him at tross@yumasun.com or phone him at 539-6870.