Of course, some people, like those with kids, dogs and things to carry around, need larger cars. But somehow these never seem to be the people you hear from in the halls of power. You see, they have kids, dogs, and things to carry around, and don't meddle much in politics.

When the first mileage standards came out, the station wagon was destroyed as a concept (you did notice them disappearing, right?) and only the excemptions for trucks and light vans allowed the creation of minivans and SUVs that people needed for the space they wanted.

Not everyone can get around easily in a Prius, and if you look at the ones buzzing by you in the diamond lanes, you'll notice most of them carrying just one person.

Some people seem to believe that advertising drives purchases more than anything else, and certainly the average American family would buy a tiny four-seat squirrel-wheel car if those evil advertisers weren't hypnotizing them into roomy SUVs. Oddly, the people who believe this seem to be immune to this advertising, no doubt since they're ever so much wiser than the average American dupe.

Some people also seem to believe that the car companies could easily build cars with much better mileage and everything else the same, if only they weren't just plain evil. Speaking as an engineer, I know something about the lengths to which car companies have gone to increase mileage without reducing size, safety, affordability, or performance to the point where nobody will buy the car. Believe me, if anyone ever came out with some simple way of doubling mileage by "changing out parts" it would have been done twenty years ago. All the easy ways have been taken.

For the record, I drive a 93 VW Eurovan, and my wife just got a 2004 Honda Pilot. The Eurovan allowed us to give each kid their own row of seats when they were little, with room left over for luggage, a bike or two, and other things, and it was worth every dime.

My Eurovan contains, for reasons of weight, many plastic working parts where an old car would have had steel or brass. They fail. I spend a lot of money replacing those, and my plastic-fitting cooling system has cost me several thousand dollars so far, including a burned-out engine. But I'm sure the tenth-mile-per-gallon it probably bought me was worth it.