The VW DASHER and Our Sad and Sorry Auto Industry

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God Loves The 1974 VW Dasher
Why my mom's old yellow econobox still beats the crap out of any new car on the road
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 16, 2005



My mother, she had this car. It was a 1974 VW Dasher, Volkswagen's urgent follow-up to the then-sagging Beetle and a seminal stopgap car for VW in America as they were about to launch the Golf/Rabbit worldwide megahit and my mom's car, it was bright lemon yellow, the color of the sun in orgasm, the color of hope's underwear, the color of God's own Post-It notes -- which, by the way, hadn't been invented yet.

This Dasher, it had this tough brown vinyl interior and brutally antagonistic manual steering and rock-hard suspension, and it went from zero to 60 in about three days, and the engine sounded like a single-stroke lawn mower choking on a pillow and it took about an hour to warm up in frigid Spokane winters, but for the age it was simply a fabulous vehicle overall, efficient and trustworthy and solid and family-friendly and cute as a ladybug in heat.

But here's the great thing: This Dasher, it got at least 30 miles per gallon. Maybe more. Maybe more like 40. It was, after all, part of the small-car revolution, a response to the great U.S. oil crisis of '73, which ushered in the era of the gas-sipping Japanese econoboxes, Honda and Toyota and Datsun et al., all of which got equally impressive mileage and all of which, in terms of durability and efficiency, simply demolished the American behemoths, with their bloated big-block oil-sucking engines and their eight mpg running downhill on a good day.

And now, here we are. It is 30 years later. It is the age of the Internet and the iPod and Botox and laser hair removal and anti-allergy vacuum cleaners. It is the time of nanotechnology and microsurgery and quantum physics and "Extreme Makeover" and horrible leadership and a speeding, ever-expanding universe we cannot possibly comprehend.

And you might think, Oh my God, how we have progressed! How we have learned and grown and evolved. Just look. Look at my powerful laptop computer. Check out my Black Eyed Peas ring tone on my shiny tiny Nokia. Look at my lousy, imbecilic president. Check out my SUV's bitchin' DVD nav system. Are we not simply startling creatures, sophisticated and superhuman? Are we not way cool and plugged in? Are we not gods?

Not quite.

I have recently purchased a new car, my first in a decade. It is the deliciously hot little Audi A3 hatchback, just in from Europe, and its engine is simply a wonder and the car is fast and tight and agile and sexy and clean, and the fit and finish are German-fetish beautiful, and I love it like saliva loves chocolate.

But one of the best aspects of the car, I thought, proudly, as I purchased it, as I compared dozens of similar cars in this class, was the top-notch mpg rating, and the ultralow emissions (for a gas engine).

Oh, my new Audi's mpg rating? It's 25 city, 31 highway.

Here is the funny thing. Here is the pathetic thing. In 2005, this is considered very good mileage. This is considered efficient and admirable, even though it's not, even though it's far, far from it, even though you look at those numbers and you think, Oh holy hell, we have, in many ways, progressed not at all. We have progressed exactly zero.

Let's be honest: This gas mileage is abominable. So is, I guarantee you, the mpg your car gets. In fact, when adjusted for overall technological advancement and where we should be with engine efficiency, every car produced in the past two decades gets worse mileage than my mom's 30-year-old Dasher and that includes the Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid, because the appalling fact is, gas mileage has remained essentially constant for over 30 years, if not worsened, across the board, despite astounding technological progress in nearly every other category of life.

Yes, hybrids get good mileage. Hybrids are a modest advancement. But the truth is, every damn gas-engine car on the road should be getting the mpg of your average Prius right now, if not a great deal more, sans any battery-assist and sans any NASA technology and sans rather unsightly aerodynamic styling. Every car. And every truck. Period.

Look. We have the technology. We have the brainpower. We could, if there were any real incentive to do so, if the government had done its job and if they had pushed forth with anything resembling social responsibility, and if the populace had been educated enough to care, we could easily have fast sexy well-built cars that get 100 mpg, right now, today, cars that give off nearly zero emissions, and we could be giving the finger to Saudi Arabia and we might not be losing a brutal war in Iraq and thousands of undereducated U.S. soldiers wouldn't be dead and we might, in fact, be headed toward a much greener, lighter, less warlike future than the one BushCo has mapped out for us. An oversimplification? Maybe. But not by much.

So why don't we do it? Why are we still so grossly dependent on oil? Why does every car on the road suck down gas like Dick Cheney sucks life force? Why did we, in fact, go in the opposite direction and embrace bloated and imbecilic SUVs over elegant, efficient cars? Simple: Because there has been exactly zero pressure on Big Auto to change. Because your government does not care. Because profits matter more than social responsibility. Because when supply is plentiful and oil prices are low, we simply don't give a damn. Just ask any Hummer owner.

Oh yes, Clinton tried, meekly, to pump up the laws and enact more stringent mpg ratings and force automakers into developing more efficient engines. His plan was killed almost instantly by the sneering Big Auto lobbyists. And of course, Reagan and Bush I and II were/are nothing if not happy whores for Big Oil, toy monkeys dancing a jig for the Saudi sheiks. Hell, Bush would no more force his Big Auto pals to overhaul their terrible fuel technologies than he'd force Karl Rove to give up his beloved raw puppy hearts and eat a goddamn salad.

Make no mistake. We invaded Iraq, by and large, to protect our strategic oil interests, to lock down that desperately needed 10 percent of the world's supply by whatever violence and blood and dead disposable U.S. soldiers necessary. And as a vicious adjunct, Bush recently signed the worst energy bill you will ever see in your lifetime: $12 billion worth of the most disgusting pork you ever laid eyes on, billions for oil and useless bridges and nauseating pet projects, and barely a penny of it goes toward renewable energy technologies or alternative fuels or conservation, and almost all goes toward BushCo's profiteering thugs in the corporate marketplace. Go, USA!

I love my new car. I enjoy the fact that, by choosing this model, I tried to minimize its impact on the world, short of giving up driving entirely and getting a bike. But I hate that it is, in the most vital way, no better than my mom's Dasher, 30 years ago. I hate the fact that, despite all our protests, despite all our gizmos and high-tech dazzle, the Powers That Be still don't seem to care.

Are we not gods? Are we not on our way to the stars? Hell no, we're not. In many ways, we haven't even left the damn driveway yet.


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Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.


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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/09/16/notes091605.DTL


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