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Are we pining for a lost dystopia where anyone can take out a loan to buy an SUV and the life-style branding that comes with it?

Are we suggesting that the American auto industry — under pressure to build smaller, more fuel-efficient cars — will be less profitable?

I live in the city of Vancouver. It’s June and we have these beautiful, tree-lined streets. But the noise, and pollution, and congestion, drives me nuts. Streams of cars in downtown gridlock with one or two people inside.

In my daydream I’d like to see more user-friendly public transit; and small, quiet, low-emission electric cars on our streets.

Any hope the American auto industry will build such cars?

A taxi driver told me not in our life time.

0% financing for gas-guzzling SUVs resulted in securitized loans (aka toxic assets)that partly fueled the financial melt down.

Where exactly is the profit here?

Rather, it seems, the zero sum gain is billions of government debt to bailout GM and Chrysler, and to save jobs.

Some land planners consider the American city an — historical aberation. — Cheap and plentiful gas, subsidized infrastructure, and vast tracks of car-dependent single-family housing.

An economy based on oil, housing starts and car sales. But this formula isn’t working right now, and most likely, cannot last forever.

With regard to SUV’s vs. small cars, the price sensitivity of the small car consumer segment is much higher than for SUV’s. Since a price sensitive consumer will switch brand/product for a small difference in price, the price competition among small cars is much greater. Conversely, an SUV consumer is less price sensitive, meaning that a consumer will not switch brands/product due to only a small difference in price. In other words, inexpensive cars compete on price while expensive cars compete on features, performance, styling, etc.

Trucks are in a world of their own, because until recently there was no serious competition from anyone but the big three. Truck consumers are also generally much more oriented toward buying domestic. These limited competition, meaning that as long as none of the big three started a price war, the big three could maintain high profit margins on trucks.

So it really doesn’t have much to do with the size. You would have seen the same profitability in luxury cars that were not as big as SUV’s if the big three made any. Unfortunately, no one really views any domestic cars as “luxury”. Luxury cars are traditionally believed to be BMW, Mercedez, or Lexus, and they have similar profit margins on those due to the limited price sensitivity of that consumer segment.