Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 6, 1993                   TAG: 9312010332
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT RENO
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUPER IDEA

We can only guess how the nation's history might have differed if Kennedy had called instead for a similar investment of taxes and resources in an affordable car that could get 80 miles per gallon of gas. But it is safe to say that it would have improved our lives and fortunes in ways far more varied and visible than any residual benefit we're still getting from having gotten to the moon.

The Clinton administration's new plan to lend government technology to the big three automobile manufacturers, with a goal to developing a supercar by the year 2003, suffers from a certain vagueness. And it will provoke the usual criticisms from economists who'll call it an ``industrial policy'' that involves the government in the business of ``picking winners.''

General Motors Chairman John F. Smith called the supercar idea ``nothing less than a major, even radical breakthrough.'' But Ford Chairman Harold Poling was careful to note that ``there's no promise that the desired technology will be found.'' Clearly, the industry isn't going overboard in its enthusiasm.

Still, even if they can get average mileage up to 50 miles per gallon, the benefits would be huge. You can roughly calculate a cost-to-benefits ratio much higher than for a space station, a failed Mars mission, a malfunctioning telescope or a supercolliding superconductor.

The supercar would be cleaner-burning and reduce dependence on foreign oil supplies. We'd all spend less for gas. It would guarantee a place for American companies in a world auto industry that is becoming almost suicidally competitive. While they're at it, maybe they could put all the expertise they developed to discover that Star Wars was impractical to the goal of inventing a car that can't be stolen or a muffler that'll last the life of a car.

Surely the plan is the best yet offered for recovering at least a fraction of the immense public investment in advanced weapons systems that have become unnecessary in the post-Cold War world. In this sense, most of the money for this program has already been spent. It is a question, for instance, of using the Army Tank Command's computer-aided design systems to build cars that are much lighter, and therefore more fuel-efficient, without sacrificing safety.

A draft of the plan released last week noted that ``government and industry engineers recognize that this ambitious goal will require radical changes in the way automobiles operate and that the results are risky and uncertain.''

Still, the history of the industry tells us that most of its technological advances in recent years involve developments that the engineers once told us were impossible, impractical, too expensive, unnecessary or too risky. They once said a 30-mile-per-gallon car was impossible. The air bag, the catalytic converter, more crash-resistant bumpers were all originally denounced as plots to bankrupt Detroit.

\ Robert Reno writes for Newsday.

L.A. Times-Washington Post News Service