Irony, Inertia and Incompetence?

Like any good liberal I was listening to NPR the other day, and the topic of discussion was States suing the EPA for its failure to enforce the Clean Air Act - namely C02 emissions from cars. One of the interviewees was a rep from the automotive industry. Her contention was that EPA restrictions forced automakers to sell cars that aren't in line with consumer demand. This is ironic because if the government had clamped down and mandated more fuel efficient cars, carmakers would actually be producing cars that people want right now instead of the gas-guzzling behemoths that are crowding dealership lots. American automakers really have no idea what the public wants - they just bring a load of cars to market and hope that one of the models resonates with consumers. Then, they crank out as many of that model as they can until it becomes obsolete or circumstances cause demand to decrease. Prime examples of this are the Ford Taurus and Explorer.

In keeping with the 'liberal media' theme of this post, I saw in the New York Times that Daimler-Chrysler was planning to bring their dimunitve SmartCar to the US in 2008. My question is why is it going to take so long? When I was in Europe in June of 2001, SmartCars were everywhere.