Autoblog

1. And with CAFE and other regulations looming we are on the brink of a new generation of automotive malaise.

Posted at 11:09AM on May 7th 2008 by TriShield

2. I was just reading an interesting statistic. Did you know that the current Accord (yes, the full-size land yacht; the one with the ~170hp four) gets nearly the same mileage and has much better performance than the 77hp wonder from the 1970s.

That says to me that, if we drop a smaller engine in the Accord (or cars like it) and readjust our expectations to 0-60@10s (which would have been more than adequate up until, oh, 2000 or so), that CAFE goals are entirely reasonable. Drop that expectation to 11-12s (which is what many European cars manage) and it's certainly attainable, even in a full-size car.

We've been spoiled for power since about 2002.

The reliability problems of that era had a lot to do with shoddy engineering. Yes, fuel injection posed awful problems for the domestics, but that didn't explain the incredible body hardware, electrical and transmission problems they saw. It certainly didn't explain their (and the Europeans') horrible warranty performance, which hurt them even more than their quality issues.

Posted at 11:36AM on May 7th 2008 by psarhjinian

3. That's garbage.

A 260hp V6 Accord scores 22 mpg combined on the EPA test.

A 160hp I4 Accord nets 24.

Giving up another 30 horsepower is going to magically boost that to 35?

A full sized car with a thousand pounds of crash-me-into-a-brickwall-at-40-mph safety frame is not going to get clowncar mileage no matter how weak the engine is.

Posted at 11:55AM on May 7th 2008 by Dan

4. No, it's not going to get 35mpg city, but it's certainly going to do much better than it does now. The point was that at ~110hp, the car is still more than adequate for most of what it's owners would use it for. 24mpg combined is not at all bad for a car of this size and power, especially considering what a car of similar specifications was managing in 1982...

...and this is a full-size car that doesn't make many compromises. People seem to be of the opinion that 35mpg isn't possible without resorting to, as you call it, clown cars; it is, but there has to be a reevaluation of what we're deeming acceptable performance. Again, we've been spoiled for power lately, and it's seriously skewed the way vehicles have been marketed. You cannot sell a midsize sedan with a ten-second time without being lampooned, despite the fact we all drove cars that slow for nearly two decades.

Take a look at some European- or Japanese-market cars; even with the difference in mileage testing cycles and units of measure, sub-2.0L gasoline-powered versions of are getting north of 35mpg on average. How do they do this, despite weighing not a not less than their North American equivalent? They've got small engines and gearing that isn't tuned for smoky burnouts at every intersection.

With diesel or hybrid powertrains, it becomes even less of an issue, but only if you keep your performance expectations reasonable.

Posted at 1:17PM on May 7th 2008 by psarhjinian

5. I agree psarhjinian, we could get 35mpg today if we really wanted 35mpg. I don't even think that by the time 2020 gets here the car makers will even have to try that hard to do it. $6/gallon gas should be enough motivation by itself. Unfortunately the average Joe is desperately afraid of change so any time you start talking about making a real, effective change people are going to resist. Eventually they'll come around, they always do, but not without a lot of angst, belly-aching and prognostications of doom and gloom.

Posted at 1:46PM on May 7th 2008 by Disgruntled Goat

6. No one denies that small euro and JDM market cars get good mileage. The disconnect is that putting their powertrains in a 3500 lb Accord is going to get equally good mileage.

When those small, low powered, primarily foreign market cars are brought over here very nearly verbatim - the Focus, the original XB, the Astra, the Daewoo Aveo, the Yaris, etc. - they still come in closer to 30 mpg than 35. Putting a 25% larger and heavier body on those underpinnings is going to get us to CAFE as simply as giving up burnout takeoffs?

No.

Posted at 2:08PM on May 7th 2008 by Dan

7. Here's the thing: a lot of those Euro- or Japanese market cars weigh just as much as the Accord. Take the Toyota Avensis, for example: ~1350kg versus ~1450kg for the (much, much larger) Accord. Assuming we put the Civic's 1.8L in the Accord, we can probably narrow that gap further. Cut some mass from the Accord's body, either with complex options like aluminum, or simple ones like thinner glass and no spare tire, and we might end up with a car that weighs _less_ than the Avensis does.

Yet the Avensis can just manage more than 35mpg (again, Euro cycle) with a gasoline engine. It's only serious disadvantge is that 1.8L four that makes maybe 130hp, and European gearing, which tends to be pretty tall.

The point here is that 35mpg is more attainable than we're being led to believe. It's not easy, and it's going to result in some dog-slow cars by current standards, but it's not going to be crap car parade that some of 1980s were. The changes needed are incremental (like weight reduction and less power-to-the-wheels) rather than radical changes (the rapid adoption of fuel injection, unleaded fuel and emissions control.)

The problem will be selling these changes to a public that's gotten addicted to cheap power.

Posted at 11:44PM on May 7th 2008 by psarhjinian

8. Comparing different cars that are similar only in weight and engine displacement is changing too many variables to meaningfully demonstrate anything.

Until manufacturers start releasing SFC plots of their engines, which will be approximately never, comparing the same car with different engines is the best you can do.

And other than niche applications shoehorning existing engines into applications that don't match their tuning, like the smallblock Impala, or the Camry powered Corolla XRS, the mileage bonus for giving up literally a third of the engine is consistently in the order of 5 to 7%.

Posted at 4:44PM on May 8th 2008 by Dan

9.
Actually the Japanese cars from the 70's were not so great either. Many were rust boxes.

Posted at 11:10AM on May 7th 2008 by Avinash machado

10. Weren't they buying american steel at that time?

Posted at 11:23AM on May 7th 2008 by rouse42

11. It wasn't a matter of where they bought it from. It was a matter of how thin they made it before it was put on the car. That openings where water would leak into (the door pillars on the old corollas) were copious. They were terribly built cars, however, the Japanese learned from their mistakes and have pushed the rest of the world to build higher quality cars.

Posted at 11:28AM on May 7th 2008 by Joe K.

12. rouse- if so, then that steel had to float across the ocean twice. Mostly though, they used a lot less (thinner) steel so the panels were more easily perforated. Rust-proofing was also not as good, as the nasty conditions in the rust belt are somewhat unique. The Germans had similar problems.

Posted at 11:34AM on May 7th 2008 by Guenther

13. My vote for the automotive excrement is on:

#1 Chrysler
#2 Ford

Posted at 11:59AM on May 7th 2008 by Russell

14. *laughs* I had a Cordoba... 318, ghetto in every possible way. But when you're 16 and the only one in a group of friends that has a car, you're a hero regardless of what you drive.

I know the current owner, It's still around and gets daily spring to fall use. Nothing more than surface rust on the body/underbody etc.

Posted at 11:12AM on May 7th 2008 by MemphisNET

15. Did it have fine Corinthian leather?

Posted at 1:43PM on May 7th 2008 by LMBVette

16. *Rich* Corinthian Leather. ;)

Posted at 3:05PM on May 7th 2008 by Matt Keller

17. I don't know. My first car was a 1980 Chevrolet Monza that smelled of mildew and rotting vinal. This car was only exceeded in craposity by my 1981 ford mustang with a straight six that overheated about 2 minutes after startup and never left my driveway.

Posted at 11:14AM on May 7th 2008 by dap7298

18. Wasn't it the Monza that had one spark plug that could not be changed until the motor was pulled?
The Vega would get my vote for that era.

Posted at 11:24AM on May 7th 2008 by Dausman

19. IIRC, that was because GM put a V8 in an engine bay designed for a four-pot. No wonder it was too small for everything to be properly accessible.

Posted at 11:51AM on May 7th 2008 by jgp

20. Yep, it was the V8 Monza. But the Monza had a V8 from year one, not a later addition.

I had a 1980 Monza. The top things were the hinge pins that were assembled from the bottom so that as they wore, they'd drop out. GM engineers never heard of gravity?

Then there was the cable operated clutch that slowly froze up and tore a hole in the firewall.

Posted at 1:20PM on May 8th 2008 by salguod