And they wonder why people don't bother with newspapers anymore. For the latest exhibit, I give you this story that appeared in the Detroit Free Press a few days ago. A choice excerpt:
“The 1908 Model T -- think about this -- the 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than the typical SUV in 2008,” Obama told the crowd. “Think about that -- a hundred years later and we're getting less gas mileage, not better, on SUVs.”
That line about the Model T, a version of which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used during her presidential bid, can be traced to a 2003 Sierra Club ad campaign that said the Model T could go 25 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Earlier references put the Model T’s mileage at 20 to 25 m.p.g.
That’s certainly better than the 18.7 m.p.g. real-world average of SUVs sold in 2008, according to federal statistics.
But according to Ford the first Model Ts built in 1908 could go 13 to 21 miles on a gallon, depending on the particular variation. The automaker and Model T clubs say typical Tin Lizzies averaged 15 m.p.g.
What's the problem, you ask? If President Obama was factually incorrect on this, shouldn't he be called on it? Yes. However, my problem with this article, as well as a similar little gotcha piece the Associated Press ran on the same speech (which I couldn't find), is that in picking apart the factuality of one statement, they are missing the forest and complaining the president (and Hillary Clinton and the Sierra Club) mistakenly described a single tree.
The larger fact, on which everyone who has repeated the line about the Model T is absolutely correct, is that we are dealing with very old technology here in the internal combustion engine, technology which in recent decades has not made great leaps forward.
I did a little research. It's hard to find precise miles-per-gallon stats on cars before the early 80s, but I did find some, thanks to the busy bees at Wikipedia. The Studebaker Scotsman station wagon, a model built in the 1957 and 1958 model years, claimed 30 miles per gallon; American Motors took first and second place in the inaugural Mobil Gas Economy Challenge in the late '50s with production, showroom-purchased Rambler models that averaged 26 and 23 miles per gallon. In fact, both Studebaker and AMC produced such fuel-efficient cars they were given their own category so they wouldn't keep beating the models on offer from the Big Three.
Justin Hyde at the Detroit Free Press, and others, had an opportunity to dig into this story, perhaps contribute to a conversation about how we need to make a great leap forward in engine technology. Instead, they play a tedious and petty game of "gotcha" with the president when anyone could see that he (or Secretary Clinton or the folks at the Sierra Club for that matter) were mentioning a classic American auto that most people recognize. Sure, it might have been more factually correct to say that "In 1958 Studebaker's Scotsman station wagon got 30 miles to the gallon, etc." but I guarantee you that probably hardly anyone in the audience would have known what he was talking about.
I suppose it is foolish of me to expect substantive reporting on just about any pressing subject from mainstream media, but it would be nice to be surprised, just once.