DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP.

Red State's Ward Clark suggests "The One Big Beautiful Bill May Bring Back the Station Wagon."  Although that has long been the Cold Spring Shops position, it's unlikely.

Trump is again planning to roll the CAFE standards back. But Congress did him one better. Rather than wait for regulators to rewrite the rule, which can take years and be subject be endless lobbying and litigation from various interest groups – lawmakers simply zeroed out the penalty as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Now, if a car company sells cars that, on average, exceed whatever the fuel-economy limit is technically in force in a given year, they pay… nothing. The mandate is still in place, but the penalty is now $0.00. (Republicans pulled off the same trick with the dreaded Obamacare insurance mandate — zeroing out the penalty rather than trying to get the mandate repealed.)

Yet, despite this breakthrough, the death of CAFE got no coverage – as in zero – from the mainstream press, which was too busy trying to find birthday cards that Donald Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein.

But automakers noticed. As one car enthusiast noted on Instagram: “The immediate industry response proves how quickly things can change when regulations lose their bite. Stellantis just brought its legendary Hemi V8 engines ‘back from exile’ and announced the return of its SRT speed shop, famous for cranking V8s to extreme power levels. This marks a dramatic reversal of the downsizing trend that saw turbocharged 4-cylinder engines replace V6 powerplants across midsize cars, SUVs, and even large pickups over the past decade.⁠”

Environmentalist scolds and Democratic socialists won’t be happy with this turn of events, and Trump still needs to officially end the federal CAFE mandate.

I forget how much of the fuel economy mandate is Act of Congress and how much a ukase issued by the Environmental Protection Administration.  The penalty, however, qualifies as a fiscal matter and gets the "reconciliation" carve-out.  Thus, we're unlikely to see any re-tooling of the assembly lines, no matter how much Mr Clark hopes.

The difference is that while the government is compelling manufacturers to abide by an agenda-driven regulation, when left alone, the manufacturers will react to their customers. They will build cars and trucks that the public wants.

Will the giant station wagon come back? I'm guessing they won't. The public has become accustomed to SUVs, and honestly, they're more comfortable, provide better views of the drivers' surroundings, and modern, high-tech vehicles actually get far better mileage than an equivalent vehicle from, say, 1975.

With the penalty for violating the standards being a token fine of $0, Stellantis can put those Hemi V8s into Rams or into whatever muscle cars they're tooled up to make now.  But a latter day LeBaron or Town and Country with space for the kiddos to stretch out in back and the torque to tow an Airstream?  Probably not.  What today's Congress can reconcile out, a future Congress can reconcile back in, and they might make the penalty retroactive.

That's too bad for consumers.

With the car companies working to make even the big sport-utes and pickups fuel efficient (heck, the current Cold Spring Shops crossover gets almost as good mileage as our three previous Golfs and Rabbits), perhaps now is the time to abolish all the fuel economy standards and mandates, because a family sedan or station wagon that exceeds an automobile-specific fuel economy standard still, using contemporary construction techniques, be less guzzling than that crew-cab Ram or three-row Navigator with two pull-down video screens for the kiddos.

The retooling won't happen.  It wouldn't happen if one of the major parties abolished the Senate's filibuster.  Think it through.  "Reconciliation" limits the set of policies a new administration can change.  In the past quarter-century, when a party secures a working majority in Washington, rather than tinker at the margins, it attempts to implement as much of its less incremental plan as it can get away with: abolishing the filibuster is the way to rig the rules so as to implement even more of it.  Then another party secures the working majority, and, again, rather than tinker at the margins, attempts to implement as much of its platform as it can get away with.  It's all rather frustrating to voters who are not True Believers and who would rather not have so much of their lives dictated by whichever True Believers are calling the shots.

Filibuster or no, reconciliation or no, no car company is going to tool up to produce those family sedans or station wagons, even if to do so reduces the aggregate fuel use of motor vehicles, because the zero penalty of today becomes a restored penalty tomorrow; and the regulation removed under simple majority today has a very good chance of being a regulation restored tomorrow.