There’s no Substitute for Horsepower

The Indignant Citizen recently spent some time at the Chicago Auto Show, where he managed to prove that not all of the useless knowledge banging around in his skull is worthless. Some of it was worth the cost of a T-shirt, or about $12. The Indignant Citizen gathered with a hundred or so slobbering fools around the Dodge Challenger concept car . The standard second-rate blonde model in tight black pants went through her presentation, ending with a trivia question: The manual transmission shifter in the original Challenger was called a Pistol-Grip. What was the automatic transmission shifter called?

Thanks to a youth spent driving a muscle car in a town of even more muscular cars, the Indignant Citizen knew the answer was the “SlapStik.”

Of course, if someone gave the Indignant Citizen the $12 instead of the T-shirt, it would have bought about six gallons of super unleaded gas for the 1972 Dodge Challenger Rallye the Indignant Citizen’s hometown best friend drove through high school. Those six gallons would get that particular car, with its rebuilt 340-cubic-inch engine, between 54 and 60 miles down the road.

Things might not be much different if Dodge decides to build the Challenger concept as a new model. Most likely Dodge will stuff its 345-horsepower, 5.7-liter Hemi engine into the Challenger. That engine’s fuel economy statistics are “not available” in the pickup truck section of Dodge’s website, but in the SUV Durango it’s listed as 19 miles per gallon on the highway, 14 in the city. The Indignant Citizen’s best friend’s 1972 Challenger got about 12 miles per gallon on the highway and something like 7 or 9 miles per gallon in the “city.”

The Challenger concept was voted best concept car at the Chicago Auto Show, and no doubt if it’s built there will be a riot outside Dodge dealerships the day they arrive, gas mileage be damned. Because given a choice, there are still many, many people who will choose horsepower. Who wants a hybrid Honda Civic that gets 50 miles per gallon but can’t get out of its own way when you can own 350 cubic inches of burbling, growling energy that will produce a roar loud enough to suck the doors off a Kia and frighten small children from a quarter-mile away?

On the macadam there is no substitute for horsepower; massive, pavement-rippling amounts of it. This is America, where going fast and hard and loud is not only acceptable, it is encouraged. It is the Law.

And for now it is still possible. The price of gasoline has not broken through the invisible point at which your average speed freak will drool over the Ram Super Duty, study the gas mileage, and amble dejectedly over to the Hyundai dealership. Judging by the ratio of pickup trucks, SUVs and muscle cars at the auto show to more fuel-efficient models, we are still living in a time when, for most people, the EPA fuel economy numbers on the sticker are not even a tertiary consideration.

Chevy, by the way, may bring back the Camaro for 2009. A concept model was on display at the show. Additionally, Ford displayed a Shelby GT-500. Which means that in the not-too-distant future, car consumers will be able to choose from the Mustang, the Camaro and the Challenger. Hot damn, it’s like the 70s again! And what about the 70s? About the middle of the decade, there was a Middle East oil embargo, gas shortages and skyrocketing prices.

Thirty years later, events are coming full circle. Iran is threatening to cut its oil exports in response to international pressure to halt a uranium enrichment program. Iraq’s oil program continues to struggle to regain its footing. Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez doesn’t much like the U.S. Attacks on oil workers in Nigeria sent gas prices soaring in Monday trading.

Maybe our way of life isn’t negotiable after all, even if someday we desire negotiation. It’s hard to deal when there’s no one willing to sit across the table.