Remember when the Berlin Wall got toppled and hordes of East Germans immediately headed west like Forty Niners in a gold rush?  Eager to see for themselves what the Soviets had been keeping secret for so many years, West Germany's autobahns were suddenly cluttered with East German Trebants -- little low-tech wheezers that could barely get out of their own way let alone the way of a Bimmer clipping along at a buck-thirty-five.

Our beloved German Shepherd, Axl, can easily win a 0-30mph drag race with a Trebant.  Our lawn tractor with its Briggs and Stratton engine is more reliable and easier to maintain than a Trebant and it climbs hills better too. The relic toaster in our kitchen boasts more modern styling than a Trebant manufactured in the same year.

Which slime ball car guy was responsible for putting all of those noisy, unsafe-at-any-speed, hyper-polluting scheissewagens on the road?  Blame it on the Car Czar. 

The Car Czar, that purveyor of automotive schlock; that despicable denizen of dictatorship showrooms; that government approved slickster-without-a-conscience who would cram people into rust-prone death traps with a shoehorn and grease to meet his monthly quotas.  That same double-dealing sales-o-crat who would move a customer to the head of the delivery waiting list if he slipped him pair of American Levis that he could sell on the black market.

Consumer Reports won't tell you this, but the Car Czar appears to be alive and well and could be heading to a (literally) US-owned auto dealership near you.  Beware folks because the Car Czar will look and sound much more legitimate, if not American, this time around. 

No longer wearing your Uncle Frank's castaway tweed suit and six-inch-wide knitted tie that was sent to Europe in a CARE Package but somehow found its way into the inventory of an East German thrift shop, the Car Czar will now be sporting new threads from the Men's Wearhouse, purchased with a federal work clothing allowance check.

This time around he'll boast about consumerism instead of communism.  He'll be all about government emissions control, safety, fuel economy and recycle-ability standards. He'll use the word green a lot, except as it relates to the extra dead presidents' pictures you'll need to pony up if you want to do the politically correct thing.

This time around the Car Czar will tout tax credits but will avoid telling you that there won't be any price cuts or rebates to help lower your monthly payment.  He definitely won't explain that a team of crack tax accountants will be required if you expect to ever see a dime's worth of your "green incentive" money.

On a more serious note, a Car Czar would be the overseer of a sales plan with the potential to marginalize, if not destroy, the domestic auto industry quicker than you can say: "The UAW is on strike!"

While import brands (including those manufactured right here in the fly-over states at an unfair cost-per-unit advantage over their American counterparts) will continue to be marketed as usual, domestic companies will be forced, through government intervention, to make fewer so-called gas guzzler models.  Specifically, those high-quality full-sized trucks and SUV's that sold well until fuel prices suddenly spiked.  The likes of which Asian companies have been unable to perfect, let alone sell for less.

Worse yet, domestic automakers will be compelled by the Car Czar to compete head-to-head with Asian manufacturers in their most successful niches; the ones they carved out for themselves over decades in fierce hand-to-hand combat with each other as much as with the Big Three.

Still up for grabs is the alternative power vehicle market.  But unless the Obama administration's Depression Era-style infrastructural works program includes the rapid construction of a vast network of electric and alternative fuel filling stations, sales of new-tech cars will remain as stalled as a Trebant at a downtown Stuttgart traffic signal.

If you think the West Germans had road rage when those Trebants hit the autobahn just wait until the Pentagon is forced to procure jeeps from the guys they fought in World War II. 

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