Sadly, the government is not the only culprit here; we (American society
in general) and especially lawyers (no offense to any listers) are also
to blame. In this days of the "Litigating States of America", nobody
wants to assume any risks, because a sue-happy public and their lawyers
will pounce on ANY situation where they can smell profits. When we
started awarding $2.5 million dollars to a woman who burned her crotch
with coffee that, knowing it was boiling hot, she STILL opted to put in
between her legs wearing a skirt, while driving a car, that's when we
began to lose the battle....
Think of the situation at hand. Some numbskull buys an M151 from a
surplus dealer (hypothetical situation, assuming that they WERE released
to the public), numbskull can't drive it, wraps it around a tree, is now
paralyzed. All of a sudden, papers for a $ multi-billion lawsuit are
served against the surplus dealer (an individual like you and me), the
Ford Motor Company, the DRMO, the US Government, etc...
Sadly, the government is not concerned with regular, thinking citizens
like us who will gladly assume the responsibility to drive a 40+ year
old vehicle, knowing full well the consequences of irresponsible
behavior. They're worried about a bozo being awarded a billion dollar
settlement by a jury of his fellow bozos, and it's because of that
neither us nor the bozos are allowed use of surplus that we've already
payed for with our hard-earned tax money.
This atmosphere permeats everything we do. Have any of you seen the new
warning labels on newer SUV's? "This vehicle does not handle like a
regular car"....???? If we need to tell people this, then that people
shouldn't be allowed to drive these vehicles in the first place.
The other side of the coin is BIG money. The Willys-Overland Company
lobbied VERY EFFECTIVELY to keep the hundreds of thousands of G503 jeeps
from being returned to the US and sold as surplus; this would have been
catastrophic to their attempts to sell a civilian version of the
vehicle. Do you think AM General is interested in thousands of surplus
Humvees available to the general public, when they're losing money like
crazy trying to market the Hummer? this is the position of most of the
American (and foreign) automakers. They're not interested in
over-engineered, over-built vehicles cheaply available to the willing
public, because it cuts into their sales of disposable sedans and luxo
sport-utilities!
Just my $0.02....
Henry Cubillan
-- Henry Cubillan TLCA #4080; AZLCA; CLCC Glendale, Arizona, USA Contributing Editor, Toyota Trails Formerly Caracas, Venezuela "Ad astra per aspera" 1991 FJ62 "The Princess" (A rough road leads to the stars) 1967 M416 "Junior" cubillan@earthlink.net=== To unsubscribe from the mil-veh mailing list, send the single word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to <mil-veh-request@skylee.com>.
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