ArcaMax

Even the bureaucrats realized that expecting a truck to be as fuel-efficient as a car without becoming a car would be as preposterous as expecting an Emperor Penguin to become a barn swallow - and still be able to survive winter in Antarctica.

Anyhow, this more lenient CAFE standard provided the loophole. One day, itt occurred to someone - a latter-day John DeLorean type, I suspect - that, hey, why don't we just sell what we used to sell (i.e., big rear-drive sedans with big V8s and lots of room for people and stuff) except we'll call it an "SUV"? The pick-up truck's bed was enclosed in sheetmetal, seats were added and - voila. A star was born. The "SUV."

Americans were once again allowed to buy the kinds of vehicles they wanted - as opposed to the kind that government bureaucrats insisted they needed. From 1991 through 2010, the CAFE standard for passenger cars held steady at 27.5 MPG while the standard for light trucks stayed at 20.7 MPG until 2004, then rose slightly to 23.5 by 2010.

This period - early '90s through the first half of the first decade of the 2000s - was the Golden Age of the SUV. Sales boomed. Even the Japanese - formerly the kings of Small Car Hill - had to rush big SUVs (with big V8s) into production, to meet the market demand for these vehicles.

Naturally, this expression of people's free choice could not be tolerated. And so, CAFE mandatory minimums for light trucks are to be upticked - first to 28.8 MPG (higher than the previous 27.5 MPG threshold for passenger cars) and from there to an average in the mid-high 30s by 2020.

This probably will not be possible to achieve without either radically downsizing (and de-powering) light trucks, or by equally radical engineering alternatives such as aluminum bodies and small displacement but heavily turbocharged "on demand" engines that don't use as much fuel as big V8s when not tasked to do work such as towing (or, frankly, when run hard for the fun of it).

This is the real reason why the new Ford F-150 (reviewed in depth here) has an aluminum body - and tiny (for a truck) twin-turbo V6 engines.

Including a 2.7 liter V6 that's not much larger than most current passenger car four cylinder engines.

A V8 is still available - for the moment - because many buyers simply won't buy a V6 truck, turbo'd or not. But it's an afterthought, almost - and clearly on the endangered species list.

All to eke out an additional 2-3 MPG - the actual difference between the "EcoBoost" turbo V6 engines and currently available V8s. And not because truck buyers were clamoring for it - but because government has pushed Ford (and soon, everyone else selling trucks) into finding a way to achieve it.

Now here's where it gets interesting - where history is likely to repeat. The CAFE rigmarole does not apply to 2500 (and 3500) series trucks - which are far from being light trucks. Another "loophole" has presented itself. And it may well result in yet another grotesque distortion of the market.

Because CAFE pressures do not apply to not-light trucks, Ford does not sell its small turbo V6s in its 2500 and 3500 series F-trucks. It sells two big V8s.

They "guzzle" gas, but they are capable of serious work - and that's what truck buyers tend to favor, even if means higher gas bills. Can you see where things might be headed?

As light trucks become less and less appealing to the market, that is, to buyers - due to either the absence of V8s or the complexity/cost of the CAFE-friendly turbo'd V6s that will likely soon become commonplace - perhaps more and more 2500 and even 3500 series trucks (bigger, heavier, thirstier) will be sold.

Instead of being "niche" vehicles made for and purchased almost exclusively by roughnecks and contractors and other serious people - as light trucks once were bought before they morphed into "SUVs" - maybe they will become mass market vehicles. Maybe we will witness an even more bizarre mutation of the car market - courtesy of the government - than we witnessed during the SUV boom. If so, it'll be karmic good fun. I'm kinda looking forward to it!

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www.ericpetersautos.com or EPeters952@aol.com for comments.