She sips nitro... with Phase 4 heads! 600 horsepower through the wheels! She's meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run!

Forgive me if I'm less than excited that the "Cash For Clunkers" bill passed the House.

The bill awards cash vouchers of $3500-$4500 for those willing to trade in a vehicle rated at an EPA estimated 18 mpg or less for a vehicle rated at a marginally better MPG.

If you can hear my cynicism bleeding through this writing then that would be because I consider this bill poor social engineering if you're trying to get more fuel efficient cars on the road. A better use of these limited federal funds would be to renew now defunct tax credits for the purchase of the most popular Toyota and Honda hybrids.

It seems to me that the environment would be better served by getting more city folks from marginally good MPG cars into excellent MPG hybrids than it would getting rural folks from sucky MPG trucks or SUVs into slightly less sucky MPG trucks or SUVS.

I realize that a big part of the push behind this bill has nothing to do with the environment. The idea is to give the U.S. auto industry a boost by moving some of the surplus sitting on lots as soon as possible. Great.

But if you REALLY wanted to help the U.S. auto industry long term then wouldn't this 4.5 billion be better spent on developing a hybrid or electric car that's affordable (i.e NOT a $40k Chevy Volt?)

Take a loss on the crap sitting on lots at the moment by drastically discounting it and selling it. Then start actually working to position itself for the rest of this century by focusing on inexpensive, environmentally sound cars.

But then I'm just some poor schlub blogging on the internet and not a politician. What do I know?

The last of the V8 Interceptors... a piece of history!

Even though today is Earth Day I was planning to write something somewhat on-topic anyway. On Friday we received word (finally) that the insurance company had totalled my car. So on Sunday Mrs. Wormer and I headed over to the local Toyota dealership to look at Priuses (Priusii?)

I wish I could say this was totally an environmentally conscious choice but the sad reality is I've been spending about $80.00/ week on gas with half my commute in stop n'go traffic. Public transit is an option with an excellent light rail system but it adds about 1/2 hour each way to my already long commute. So I'm planning on continuing driving but increasing my mpg. Purely selfish on my part.

Having said that - for the last year or so THIS has been my dream car...

A car that screams "this man is a cool stud." That, and "mid-life crisis." But I'll go with the first one if you don't mind.

So buying a car that looks like this instead...

...is somewhat of a sacrifice, no? It screams "patchouli eating hippy."

I looked into the tax incentives for buying hybrids and was stunned to find out their are currently no federal tax incentives for a car that is hand's down the best mass-produced environmentally friendly choice available at the moment.

Of course the free SUV loophole remains in effect. Congress could easily fix this "business" loophole by re-defining qualifying vehicles so it only covers the farm equipment it was originally intended to cover. At least we can take a sick sort of glee in the idea that rising gas prices will at least stick it to the assholes who've ripped off taxpayers by buying Hummers.

But what I'd really like to see out of our political leadership was some serious tax credits towards the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles and mass-transit (a credit is better than a deduction, IMHO.) Yes, this is selfish. But it's a kind of selfish that will have the side effect of helping the environment. Everybody wins.

Except those that drive Hummers.