This is the story of an American boy who wanted to buy a small car - a very small car in fact. The boy lived for some time in the foothills of Germany's Odenwald, with its enchanted autobahns and infinite speed limits. The boy desired a light, inexpensive, fuel-efficient vehicle to take back from his voyage, and there were several such cars to choose from. The boy clearly was far from home.
In this magical land were many small car models unfamiliar to the boy: Opel Corsa, Renault Clio, Toyota Aygo, Peugeot 107. The roads were filled with countless examples of these practical autos, encouraged by less street space and higher fuel taxes. One such car, the Smart Car, was so tiny that it could park perpendicularly in a parallel-parking zone.
The boy's affections were captured by the tiny Ford Ka, whose three-door body and corner wheels resembles a futuristic, trapezoidal pod. Ka's back seat doubles as trunk space, and its front seats were close together and a bit cramped. The boy was looking for transportation, not a place to live. Ka surely was not for the obese, but the boy astutely observed that the obese weren't as plentiful on the other side of the ocean.
Such a small car must get kick-ass gas mileage, mused the boy. He looked up the specs and did the math, converting Ka's liters per 100 kilometers rating into the customary miles per gallon of his homeland. Ka's 1.0 liter engine got 48 mpg with standard gasoline, which was more than any non-hybrid car in his own country. A few other European models were even more efficient. The boy laughed at the bloated attention given to expensive hybrid cars in America.
Why he hadn't seen the car in his own country, the boy didn't know. After all, Ford is an American company that championed the assembly-line manufacturing process, allowing cars to become affordable for the masses. The boy did more math, converting the funny Euro currency into the almighty dollar of his kingdom. Ka cost less than any model sold back home. Even with a sizable import tariff, Ka would still be affordable, and surely an American company's product could be brought to America.
Then the wicked U.S. Department of Transportation stepped in. USDOT publishes regulations for all cars manufactured and sold in America, and the same rules apply to cars to be imported. The guidelines establish procedures "governing the importation of motor vehicles subject to the Federal motor vehicle safety, bumper, and theft prevention standards," as the regulations state. Apparently to the boy, other countries didn't try to prevent car theft.
Given the higher speed limits of most European countries, the boy also couldn't understand how America's safety standards could be more stringent. Didn't 40,000 people die each year in American traffic accidents, a larger proportion than Europe? In fact, a much larger percentage of traffic-related deaths in Europe are bicycle- and pedestrian-related, which American car safety regulations certainly can't take credit for abating.
The only plausible explanations are that Americans are more careless drivers and American roads are more poorly designed and maintained. The boy wasn't surprised by either of these possibilites.
In a rage, the boy contacted Ford Germany and learned that there was no way the Ford Ka could be contorted to pass U.S. laws. Ka is sold in Asia, South America, Africa and Europe, but it can't be driven in the United States. In fact, many small cars available in Europe simply are too small to be legal in America.
How idiotic and misguided the federal regulations must be, that allow the Hummer and forbid the Ka. It seemed to the boy that Americans feel safer when they can run over people, rather than safely taking up less street space in the first place.
Dan Magestro is a postdoctoral research associate in the physics department. He can be reached for comment at magestro.1@osu.edu.
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