Obama: Amendment Encourages "Deceptive Practices" By Car Dealers

President Barack Obama spoke out Wednesday (5/12) against an amendment to the financial regulation bill that would exempt car dealers from oversight.

The amendment, from Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), the president said, "encourages misleading sales tactics that hurt American consumers."

Full story from Automotive News (free registration required).

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NASA To Help Investigate Unintended Acceleration

Gee, maybe it is rocket science.

Despite decades of experience and data indicating that the vast majority of unintended acceleration incidents fully investigated end up being cases of drivers standing on the gas instead of the brake, the Obama administration has decided to launch not one, but two investigations...one by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) with the help of The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) and the other by The National Academy of Sciences...to get to the bottom of the unintended acceleration incidents that have been plaguing Toyota and other manufacturers.

How long? 15 months.

How much? $3 million.

Full story from The Detroit News.

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And Miles To Go...

Whether the fuel economy standards announced by President Obama yesterday are a good thing or not is a matter of opinion (or perhaps ideology). But, as Peter DeLorenzo notes in today's Autoextremist, it is what it is...and now the work begins.

So how far from the targets are the cars we drive now? Jalopnik did the math, and found that not a single automaker is there yet.

UPDATE: But then, Los Jalops learned more about the nuts, bolts and...um...air conditioning...behind the figures. Turns out the bar's a lot lower than the headlines suggest.

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