Green auto rebate redux

I hadn't realized, when I blogged here about the eco-auto rebate, just pissed off Honda was.

Apparently they were.

I can understand their point of view. The cut-off is 6.5 L/100 km. The Yaris is rated at 6.4, the Fit at 6.6. And the outcome apparently is that the rebate program seriously skewed sales towards the Yaris. So Honda came out with a rebate plan of its own, and almost immediately saw the Fit sales performance zoom back.

Now supposedly they're tweaking under the hood of both the Fit and the Civic to see if they can come in under the wire - although they stress they won't do anything in terms of reducing the Fit's curb weight that might compromise its 5-star crash rating, which incidentally is better than that of the Yaris, which got a 4-star score.

This is excellent news. And it goes to show that government actually can make a difference, even if the difference is sometimes small.