Praise Diesel. Damn Detroit.

I am bothered.

My first oil crisis memories involved driving around Wichita, Kansas in my Uncles fat-ass Chrysler New Yorker, while he passed up several gas stations to save a penny or two per gallon. He'd be damned if he'd pay $0.30 for a gallon if some guy down the road sells it for $0.28. That old Chrysler probably got about 10 - 12 mpg on the highway - 13 with the wind at its back. It was 1973.

For we who aren't good with numbers, that was 33 years ago.

Today, as I ponder what car might give me exceptional mileage, lots of room, good performance with a smattering of luxury, I come up with exactly one -- the Toyota Camry Hybrid, which the EPA rates at 40 mpg city/hwy.

By world standards, that ain't sheeeeeit.

If consumer electronics had experienced such dismal progress, you'd be paying $250 for a calculator whose most notable function was to input 71077345 and have it read "SHELLOIL" upside down.

And yet we just take it.

In Europe, diesel engines account for 40% of all cars sold. And these are't the belching, stinking, polluting diesels of yester-year. No, these are clean-burning, "green" diesels, with exceptional power, and which could run on grandmas cookin' oil, if need be.

Moreover, the diesels sold in Europe are most of the exact same cars sold over here -- but "over here", they won't sell us the diesels.

Honda makes an Accord that gets 44 mpg (diesel) in Europe. Volkswagen sells a Passat Diesel which gets almost 58 mpg hwy and nearly 40 mpg city. This is not a go-kart, folks. It's a luxurious family sedan. Heck, you can even buy a fat-ass BMW 7 Series (think Alexis Colby) diesel which averages 35 mpg.

And what does detroit give us? A Hummer. Where is the outrage?

And guess what else, the minute our friends at Daimler Chrysler sent the hulking Chrysler 300C across the pond, guess what engine they dropped in? A 3.0 litre diesel which averages (AVERAGES!) 35 mpg and gets almost 43 mpg on the highway!

And it's cousin, back here in the colonies? It gets a whopping 21 city / 28 highway. IT'S THE SAME CAR!!!

We are being duped, people. I don't know if it's big oil, the Big Three, or tree huggers, but we're being duped, and I am angry.

I want an awsome car with huge diesel torque and huge diesel mileage, and unless I'm willing to go to London or Stuttgart, I'm SOL.

And meanwhile, our soldiers are half a world away fighting against people that want to kill us dead, and we just keep paying them to shoot at us.

What the devil is wrong with us?