Car sales: we’ve hit a grim milestone not seen since 1981. Why can’t we do anything about it?

Just after noon on Nov. 27, 2022, a few days after Thanksgiving, Neal Greenfield and his daughter Kimberly Karsen were heading toward their car in Des Plaines, Illinois, outside Chicago. In his 2002 book High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, Keith Bradsher wrote that “AMC promoted the Jeep’s four-wheel drive even though its engineers and executives knew that it had little value for urban buyers.” As many carmakers would come to realize, that was a savvy approach when selling SUVs, motor vehicles designed with features like raised ground clearance that make them capable of going off-road. “There are people who can afford to buy what car model they want, and then there are those who can’t afford to buy a new car at all.” All in all, car bloat has increased vehicle prices while making autos more destructive to human life, natural ecosystems, and pavement alike. Last summer, I posted online about car bloat endangering people who are walking, which prompted Mike Levine, Ford’s North America product communications director, to claim that the surge in pedestrian deaths was due to “street lighting.” Obviously, American carmakers do not want to draw attention to the growing size of their lineups, given that their profits rely on the juicy margins of big SUVs and trucks. In theory, external market dynamics could cause a sharp shift in car shoppers’ preferences, as they did in the 1970s when a spike in oil prices led consumers to embrace gas-sipping “subcompacts.” A comparable surge in gasoline prices could likewise tilt purchase decisions toward smaller, gas-powered cars.