Get educated

• Read 'The Detroit Project Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)' by clicking here.
• Read our Quick Facts and Talking Points by clicking here.
• Read some Alarming Facts from the Natural Resources Defense Council
• Myths and Realities about SUVs from the book, High and Mighty: SUVs: The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and how They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher.
• For more information visit Public Campaign, a non-profit that focuses on campaign finance reform, by clicking here: http://www.publiccampaign.org. And don't miss the Natural Resources Defense Council at http://www.nrdc.org.

From Arianna:
Auto Sales Fell to Lowest Rate in 4 1/2 Years
By DANNY HAKIM, NY TIMES
DETROIT, March 3 — Sales of the lucrative, gas-guzzling giants of the auto industry — the Escalades, Excursions, Suburbans and other big sport utility vehicles — are sliding, according to figures released today. Analysts said that rising gas prices and a drumbeat of criticism of S.U.V.'s figure in the slowing sales. But the biggest culprit, they said, is a new wave of small and medium-size sport utilities from Asian automakers that are chipping away at a crucial profit center for the domestic auto industry. Read more...

S.U.V.'s and Satire
The New York Times (2-22-03)
To the Editor: In "Did My Car Join Al Qaeda?" (Op-Ed, Feb. 16), Woody Hochswender seems to miss the point of the ads run by the Detroit Project, a group that I co-founded. He has obviously fallen victim to an epidemic of literal-mindedness that is sweeping the country. The use of exaggeration to make satirical points is a venerable tactic in the tradition of Jonathan Swift: savage humor at the service of passionate conviction, intended not to provoke laughs but social change. Irreverence with a purpose. Would Mr. Hochswender have also fumed about the outlandishness of Swift's "modest proposal" that Irish babies be sold for food? Read more...

Road Outrage: How Corporate Greed And Political Corruption Paved The Way For The SUV Explosion
By Arianna Huffington, Filed January 8, 2003
America's automakers have finally sputtered into first gear. Responding to the growing public outcry over its reckless gas-guzzling ways, the auto industry used the Detroit Auto Show this week to unveil a line-up of "coming soon to a showroom near you" hybrid vehicles -- including a number of hybrid SUVs. The question -- though I'm willing to bet no one at the car show asked it -- is: What took them so long? After all, cars powered by a combination of gas and electricity have been around since 1905, when the Woods Motor Vehicle Co. offered a dual-powered model. Read more...

Why Oil Sheiks Love A Good Hummer
Filed November 25, 2002
By Arianna Huffington
Once again, America is a nation divided. I'm not talking about the irreparable, brother-against-brother split between those who think the Bachelor should have proposed to Brooke instead of Helene. I'm talking about a contentious clash that is just beginning to rage. Call it the SUV war. As you read this, the opposing camps are staking out their turf. Read more...

Got Oil?
Filed October 21, 2002
By Arianna Huffington
The Bush team's ridiculous and wildly inflammatory anti-drug ads are still running in heavy rotation. You know the ads I'm talking about -- the ones where innocent-looking, middle-class teens admit their culpability for the consequences of the drug trade. "I helped blow up buildings," says one doe-eyed youth. So if that is legitimate logic, and our president says that it is, I wonder if we might turn the tables on him by starting a little ad campaign of our own to sabotage another misguided Bush campaign: the War on Conservation. Read more...

Support Our Troops, Dump That SUV
Filed November 14, 2001
By Arianna Huffington
On the way to my daughter's school this morning, I encountered the usual L.A. rush-hour road rally of elephantine sports utility vehicles, many flying American flags. Taking the cake was a massive SUV proudly sporting half a dozen -- one on each window and two on the bumper. My first thought was, how patriotic! My second was, how much more patriotic it would be to trade in the gas-guzzling leviathan for something that sips, rather than chugs, at the gas pump. Read more...

In the News:
Missing the Boat on Oil Security
Draft Op/Ed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the New York Times
February 12, 2003
President Bush is looking for his car keys in the wrong pocket. Caught squarely in the public outcry over America's deadly addiction to Middle East oil, the White House has latched on to hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles as the solution. Read more...

THE BIG PICTURE / PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
Celebs with causes? How dare they
LA TIMES (1-21-03)
When it comes to love-hate relationships, nothing tops the mysterious oscillation of envy and adulation that occurs between Hollywood and the media. How's this for Exhibit A: A tiny band of show-biz environmental activists known as the Detroit Group launched a controversial TV ad campaign earlier this month suggesting that people who buy gas-guzzling SUVs are supporting terrorism, a sly spoof of the Bush administration's long-running ad campaign that links drug use to terrorism. Read more...

QUESTIONS FOR ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Foreign Policy Vehicles
Interview by ROBERT MACKEY, NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE (1-19-03)
How did your TV commercials connecting S.U.V.'s to terrorism get started? After watching the drug-war ads equating taking drugs to terrorism, I wrote a column making a link between driving gas-guzzling cars like S.U.V.'s and supporting countries that fund terrorists. And at the end of this column I had what I considered a rhetorical question: would anyone be willing to pay for a people's ad campaign to jolt our leaders into reality? The next morning I woke up to a flood of over 5,000 e-mails. So I called two great friends of mine who are sort of activists in their own ways. One is Laurie David, who is an environmental activist and married to Larry David, who put the first hybrid cars on his show, ''Curb Your Enthusiasm.'' Read more...

IN OUR SUVS
Guilt-tripping
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (1-19-03)
It's fun and easy to bash drivers. But if you want Americans to save gas, says John Valenti, tell the government to insist on higher fuel economy averages. This is Walter Locke. This is the Hummer H2 he is going to sell for $57,555. It's big. It's sunset orange. It weighs 6,400 pounds and gets 10 miles to a gallon of gas in a stiff tailwind. Locke considers himself a good American. He has a wife, kids. He pays his taxes. He has a brother-in-law who was in the Army, another who was in the Navy and another, the Marines. His father was in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. And no matter what pundit Arianna Huffington and three of her Hollywood cronies from The Detroit Project say in a new anti-sport-utility vehicle campaign, Walter Locke does not support terrorism. Read more...

Noise Pollution? Fill'er up!
By Lloyd Grove Washington Post Staff Writer 1/16/03
We like both Los Angeles pundit Arianna Huffington and New York Post gossip czar Richard Johnson, so we really don't want to get in the middle of their bitter little spat. Alas, we have no choice. Yesterday Huffington phoned us to complain that Johnson has deliberately misrepresented her ongoing jihad against gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Johnson -- a proud SUV owner who on Monday devoted much of his Page Six column to the "Detroit Project," Huffington's anti-SUV ad campaign -- accused her and her Hollywood cohorts of hypocrisy. Read more...

For guilt trips, try an SUV
New York Daily News (1-12-03) BY THOMAS HACKETT
It's called culture jamming, and the idea is to turn the skillful techniques of advertising back on the companies that relentlessly try to sell us stuff we don't really need. In two commercials first seen last week, columnist Arianna Huffington suggested that SUVs, like drugs, support terrorism. "This is George," a girl says of a man at a gas station. Read more...

Listening For The Backfire Of An SUV Attack
By TOM JACSON, The Tampa Tribune (1-11-03)
Only in America, where the free exchange of ideas and concepts has produced HBO's wonderful "Band of Brothers" miniseries and NBC's deplorable "Fear Factor" in the same continuum, could the most popular variety of vehicle on the road also be the most vilified. Loved and hated is the sport utility vehicle, the most-discussed form of transportation since Cro-Magnon Man hitched goat to cart. Read more...

EDITORIAL: Running on fumes
The Times-Picayune (1-11-03)
To judge from the furious reaction among supporters of the auto industry, you would think that writer Arianna Huffington had the power to ban sport-utility vehicles. Ms. Huffington is the co-founder of and most visible spokeswoman for the Detroit Project, a group that has produced a series of ads that connect the low gas mileage of beefy SUVs to Middle Eastern terrorism. The campaign has touched off a firestorm. Read more...

GREG JERRETT: Riding in SUVs with bin Laden
Nonpareil Staff Writer 01/10/2003
As long as politicians have their campaigns bought and paid for by auto makers and oil companies, the rhetoric will fly fast and furious. Until we do what's right because it's right, we shouldn't take it personally when we're accused of riding with Osama because we choose to only get 9 m.p.g. Read more...

Filling up gas guzzlers promotes terror: new US ad campaign
Agence France Presse (1-9-03)
Filling up your gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle (SUV) does more than simply damage the environment -- it also encourages terrorism, a provocative new US ad campaign claimed Wednesday. A group lobbying against the soaring numbers of overly powerful passenger vehicles on US roads launched the campaign in a bid to make consumers aware of the link between petrol consumption and US foreign policy. Read more...

New campaign in SUV battle
Ads claim connection between SUV drivers and terrorism
By Dan Lothian, NBC NEWS
Jan. 7 — SUVs are in a peculiar position in the American psyche these days. They are at once very popular and also despised; popular for their room, power and safety, despised for their gas-guzzling, more-power-than-is-necessary appetite. Now a familiar political and social commentator has decided the best way to attack SUV drivers is to accuse them of aiding terrorism. It that fair? Watch the video report here.

TV Ads Say S.U.V. Owners Support Terrorists
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, NY Times 1/8/03
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — Ratcheting up the debate over sport utility vehicles, new television commercials suggest that people who buy the vehicles are supporting terrorists. The commercials are so provocative that some television stations are refusing to run them.Patterned after the commercials that try to discourage drug use by suggesting that profits from illegal drugs go to terrorists, the new commercials say that money for gas needed for S.U.V.'s goes to terrorists. Read more...

Detroit Fears Some Consumers May Be Souring on Big SUVs
By JEFFREY BALL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 1/8/03
DETROIT -- An unsettling thought is starting to nag at auto makers who rely on sport-utility vehicles for a big chunk of their profits: The biggest SUVs are becoming uncool. The death of the SUV has been falsely proclaimed off and on throughout its decadelong rise as an American consumer icon. But now some of the Big Three's top executives themselves say they see distinct signs that an important segment of cutting-edge consumers -- not just environmental activists -- are starting to sour on monster SUVs. Read more...

AP (1-8-03)
New TV commercials link gas-guzzling SUVs to terrorism funding;
By NADA EL SAWY, Associated Press Writer
A group opposed to U.S. reliance on foreign oil on Wednesday debuted two television ads that try to link gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles to terrorist funding, mimicking spots that connect drug money to "terrible things." One commercial features a child's voiceover connecting the dots between a man filling his gas tank and terrorist training footage. The closing statement: "Oil money supports some terrible things. What kind of mileage does your SUV get?" The other ad features talking heads commenting about their SUVs. One person says, "My kids think it's cool." Another says, "I helped blow up a nightclub." Read more...

Big-Tire Backlash
By Rebecca Winters, Time Magazine (12-17-02)
A national television ad campaign will be launched in January linking gas guzzlers to the war on terror. One commercial opens with an image of an SUV driver pumping gas, followed by stock footage of a terrorist training camp. The closing text reads, "What is your SUV doing to the world?" The two 30-second spots are the project of Laurie David, wife of comedian Larry David, along with political pundit Arianna Huffington and others. Read more...

Today Show (12-17-02)
ANN CURRY, co-host: But first, more than one of every four vehicles sold in America today is an SUV, making it the most popular vehicle on the road. Well now one group is fueling a fiery controversy producing television ads saying that the extra gas guzzled by your SUV makes it a threat to national security. Well, syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington is the co-founder of the new group Americans For Fuel Efficient Cars, and Csaba Csere is the editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine. Read more...

The Big Smear Campaign
By Lloyd Grove, Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 11, 2002; Page C03
The police are looking for a miscreant who in the past few weeks, presumably in the dead of night, has been smearing door handles of Sport Utility Vehicles parked in Georgetown with canine excrement. Yesterday the perpetrator's motive remained deeply mysterious: Is he or she a crude environmental bioterrorist protesting the use of gas-guzzling SUVs? Or is this person a zealous dog-hater who has been victimizing pet-owners who also happen to drive SUVs? Read more...

United Press International (12-10-02)
Terrible things: The government defends its anti-drug ads.
by Jacob Sullum
"When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden," comic Bill Maher suggests in the title of his new book. Meanwhile, a little less tongue in cheek, columnist Arianna Huffington has suggested an ad campaign highlighting the connection between oil consumption and terrorism. A script by ad writer Scott Burns has SUV drivers confessing, "I gassed 40,000 Kurds," "I helped hijack an airplane," and "I helped blow up a nightclub." Huffington says she is raising money to produce the ads. Oddly, the Bush administration has not volunteered to chip in. Read more...

The Christian Science Monitor 11-25-02
Introspection behind the wheel
By Ed Hunt
They'll need a miracle. A group of religious leaders is trying to get Americans to give up their gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles - and they are not alone. The National Partnership for Religion and the Environment recently met with officials from Ford and General Motors, pressuring the automakers to produce more fuel-efficient models. Read more...

The Observer (11-24-02)
What would Jesus drive? A disciple carrier, of course
Ed Vulliamy, New York
'WHAT would Jesus drive?' It's a question of burning significance in Detroit - Motor City - this week, as a challenge to America's love affair with the gas-guzzling Sports Utility Vehicle, or SUV, comes from an unexpected quarter: America's religious leaders. Read more...

Salon.com (11-21-02)
What would Moses drive?
By Sheldon Drobny
Jews once used their car-buying power to punish Nazis and anti-Semites. It's time to stop buying the SUVs that soak up the gas that provides the cash that sponsors terrorist attacks on Israel.
I grew up hearing my father insist I could never purchase a German or Japanese car. I was born in 1945, just after the end of World War II, when Germany and Japan caused the deaths of 50 million people, including 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. My parents were immigrants from Poland. My mother lost a brother, sister and five nieces and nephews to the Holocaust. Read more...

The Christian Science Monitor (11-21-02)
Proud, patriotic & green
By Amanda Paulson
As war with Iraq edges closer, conserving oil and resources has become the new mantra of flag-waving Americans, who argue that true security will come only when the US stanches the flow of foreign oil.
The nation's green movement is taking on shades of red, white, and blue. In ads, articles, and websites, environmentalists have pulled a page from President Bush's patriotic playbook, selling their cause of energy conservation against a backdrop of national security. Read more...

The Charlotte Observer (11-18-02)
GOT SUV? COULD YOU GIVE IT UP?
DON HUDSON, Staff Writer
Last month, Republican activist turned political pundit Arianna Huffington pitched the idea that instead of the drug commercials the Bush administration has made shaming suburban teens for supporting evil warlords and drug cartels, it should turn its attention to a greater evil: Soccer moms in SUVs. Read more...

The Washington Post (11-15-02)
The Reliable Source
Lloyd Grove, Washington Post Staff Writer
There was much ado about yesterday's item regarding Los Angeles pundit Arianna Huffington and her incipient ad campaign against gas-guzzling SUVs. A swarm of television news producers immediately booked Huffington on this and that, and readers e-mailed us in amusement and outrage. Read more...

The Washington Post (11-14-02)
The Reliable Source
Lloyd Grove, Washington Post Staff Writer
Los Angeles pundit Arianna Huffington, who until last year drove a gas-guzzling Lincoln Navigator, has joined forces with Hollywood producer Laurence Bender and environmental activist Laurie David, wife of comedy auteur Larry David, to produce television commercials urging patriotic Americans to get their SUVs off the road and, for the sake of national security, drive fuel-efficient vehicles instead. Read more...

CNN NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN (11-14-02)
AARON BROWN: We're about to be joined from Los Angeles by the always interesting syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, who along with some friends and colleagues is about to make a pair of TV commercials, more like public service spots, denouncing what she and her partners believe is one of the great menaces currently facing the country. Read more...