[MetroMPG]

What a head slapper:

For years - and years, and years -automakers in the U.S. insisted that their studies showed that Americans didn't value fuel economy and preferred those fuel-swilling (and profitable) SUVs and pickups over gas-sipping compacts.

But that's not so, says former General Motors economist Walter McManus, now a professor and head of the Automotive Analysis division of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan.

GM often received outside data in the 1990s showing that people wanted fuel economy, McManus said in an interview with subscription-only Energy & Environment News.

[GM] just as routinely dismissed them.

Sigh.

Full article: "Say it Ain't So! Detroit Ignored Fuel Efficiency Demands, Says Ex-GM Economist " Green Car Advisor