WHILE VISIONS OF SUPERCARS DANCED IN THEIR HEADS:

SPECIAL REPORT: Supercar: The Tanking of an American Dream (Sam Roe, Chicago Tribune)

Part One: Starting Up

On a crisp fall morning in 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore walked side by side out of the West Wing of the White House, past the Rose Garden, and onto a small stage on the South Lawn. There, they greeted three of the most powerful business leaders in the world: the chief executive officers of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

Before dozens of dignitaries, the president announced that America was embarking on a technological venture as ambitious as any the nation had ever attempted.

Over the next 10 years, the U.S. government and the American auto industry would combine the full weight of their resources-billions of dollars, the best scientific minds and previously secret Cold War technologies-to build an invention simple in concept yet critical in importance: a family car that achieved 80 miles per gallon.

This "Supercar" not only would be a tremendous boon to the environment, reducing pollution and slowing global warming, but it also would cut the nation?s reliance on oil imports from the volatile Middle East and inject new life into a stagnating domestic auto industry.

In short, Supercar would make America a cleaner, safer and more prosperous place in which to live. "We do not have the choice to do nothing," Clinton told the crowd.

But nine years after it was born in pomp and splendor, Supercar is dead.

The victim of bureaucratic turf wars, a hostile auto industry and self-serving politicians, the car that was supposed to change everything now stands as a sobering reminder of the forces arrayed against greater fuel efficiency and a cleaner environment.

Lost were years of effort, $1.5 billion in taxpayer money and perhaps the best opportunity the nation has had to address some of its most pressing issues.

So, as you read that, you can't help thinking: gee, this kind of top/down management worked so well in Japan. Then you get to the bit that sums it all up:

It didn't have to be this way.

A review of thousands of government and industry documents, including dozens of confidential White House records, and interviews with key Supercar participants show that the Big Three automakers and U.S. government officials repeatedly put their own short-term interests and political agendas ahead of what was good for the project and what was good for the country.

What kind of Cloud-Cuckoo Land does Mr. Roe live in that he thinks it didn't have to be that way? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2002 7:34 PM