Italian police arrested a man with a grudge against DaimlerChrysler’s Smart cars after he torched 15 of them in a rampage in Rome, Reuters reported.
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“I can’t stand the sight of Smart cars,” police quoted the man as saying. Doctors have diagnosed the alleged city car arsonist as “psychologically unhinged and a danger to society.”
Meanwhile, arsonists and vandals acting under the umbrella of a group called the Earth Liberation Front, trashed a Covina, California, SUV warehouse and two dealerships last Friday night, burning a number of Hummer H2 and Chevrolet SUV models, along with part of the dealership, and spraying anti-SUV slogans on other unburned vehicles on dealer lots. There were also sporadic attacks on privately owned SUVs parked in nearby streets.
One commentator noted that the group campaigning against SUV pollution set fires that caused more pollution than 100 of each burned-out model would create in a normal vehicle lifetime.
