The Big Three auto makers are no longer in palliative care, thanks to the fat profit margins on fat vehicles known as SUVs. But you have to wonder whether the very products that spared Detroit from extinction could ensure the industry's next crisis. SUVs in general are gas pigs. With gas at record high prices, Detroit, with the help of loophole-laden government fuel economy standards, seems to have engineered yet another marketing miscalculation.

Most SUVs, especially the ones based on truck frames, get abysmal fuel economy. When gas was going for half the price of mineral water not so long ago, that didn't much matter. But oil is now worth $40 (U.S.) a barrel, up from $11 during the 1998 trough year. Gas prices are soaring. North of the border, they are near $1 (Canadian) a litre. If you own a Ford Expedition, a big SUV but by no means the biggest, it will cost you about $100 to fill the 98-litre tank. And for that you might get two round trips to the golf course.

In Europe, where gas and diesel cost as much as cheap wine -- the British price is about $2 a litre -- cars have been getting smaller and more fuel efficient. In North America, the opposite has happened. Half or more of the vehicles sold are classified as light trucks -- SUVs, minivans and pickups. Not surprisingly, the average fuel economy of all vehicles has been falling and reached its lowest level since 1980 last year. Europe's emphasis on fuel-efficient cars is one of the main reasons why oil consumption has actually fallen in two otherwise car-crazy countries, Britain and Germany, since the 1970s. In the United States, consumption has gone from 14.7 million barrels a day in 1970 to about 20 million today. Cars and light trucks suck up about 40 per cent of that total.

You can't blame Detroit for giving consumers what they wanted -- higher, heavier, more powerful vehicles that, with green and tan paint jobs, would look perfectly at home on a war movie set. These products flew out of the showrooms even though they had voracious appetites for fuel. The irony is that the U.S. government's effort to boost fuel economy has proven so prone to manipulation that the reverse happened.

The centrepiece of the U.S. effort is known as CAFE, short for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Created by Congress after the 1974 oil embargo, the program's goal was to double fuel efficiency of new cars by 1985 while reducing tailpipe emissions. In the early years, great progress was made. Cars became lighter, engines went from eight cylinders to six or four.

Then Detroit got clever. Since the fuel economy standards for cars (now 27.5 miles per gallon) were so much higher than those for light trucks (21 mpg starting next year), the Big Three found devious ways to classify more and more of their products as light trucks. This allowed the manufacturers to make increasingly big vehicles without worrying about their fuel consumption figures.The loophole has been exploited to the point of absurdity. Chrysler's little PT Cruiser is actually a truck under CAFE guidelines. Why? Because its back seats are removable. Subaru has been getting a lot of bad publicity recently because it pulled a similar stunt. Until 2004, its economical and off-road-worthy Outback model was officially a passenger car. The 2005 version is a truck. Subaru engineered the miraculous transformation by raising the ground clearance a little more than an inch. The company claims the new Outback consumes slightly less fuel than the old model. But bumping it into the truck category has the advantage of effectively boosting the average economy of its car fleet.

The upshot of Detroit's marketing savvy and the government's flawed fuel economy standards is a national parking lot stuffed with oversized, gas-guzzling beasts that have put a smile on OPEC's face. With the cost of feeding an SUV eating into your kids' education savings plans, consumers will soon demand gas-sipping cars. The trouble is, there aren't many around. Most of the development work has been funnelled into the other end of the design spectrum.

Here, the government can lend a helping hand by scrapping CAFE or redesigning it so its original purpose is fulfilled. Raising gas taxes, as the Europeans did, is probably the simplest and fairest route. This would have the double effect of encouraging Detroit to develop less thirsty vehicles and drivers to drive less. The auto makers support this option, although it's an easy stance to take because tax hikes would be political suicide.

Another option is to close CAFE's truck loophole. In this scenario, a measurement would be invented in which the numerator is the number of gallons consumed per 100 miles. The denominator is the weight of the car. This would force SUVs and other light trucks to become more fuel efficient.

There is one good thing about high gas prices. A lot of those SUVs will be coming onto the second-hand market at bargain prices as drivers realize they can't afford to run them any more.