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posts about #1982nissansentra more → Look Out, Toyota Starlet! The '82 Sentra Gets 58 Highway MPG!
Detroit, 3:44 AM
Sat Dec 12
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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Look Out, Toyota Starlet! The '82 Sentra Gets 58 Highway MPG! |
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11/07/08
How much does the stripped 2008 Versa weigh compared to the '82 Sentra? I would not be surprised to find it a lot porkier. What MPG would you get in the Sentra if you dropped in a drivetrain with 2008 level technology AND roughly the same power as the '82 car? (All alleged economy cars of today are overpowered, being faster than a Corvette was in the 70's). If that's good, then let's tweak the Sentra body for some aerodynamic improvement without turning it into a modern jellybean. Then set a weight target that will still generate impressive MPG and see how much safety and creature comforts stuff you can add back in, if any.
Maybe we need some exemptions from some of the safety regs that exact big weight penalties, for cars that get a genuine 50 MPG or more.
11/07/08
Yeah, there's a lot of feature-bloat, but today's cars have a lot more metal in them.
Also, would you buy a stripper-mobile?
I hear so many people here whining for them, but it's not like they can't just run out and buy one for $3-7k.
11/07/08
11/07/08
H.R. 5843, The Act to Remove Federal Penalties for the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults
I do see a lot of pot-heads driving old, beat-up datsuns, but that's probably just coincidence.
11/07/08
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11/07/08
I think they were still getting more like 30/40 mpg. Something we pay 25k for, with hybrids these days. Too bad we have the government mandating so many safety features today like traction control, airbags, etc. Maybe we would have 2200 lb cars that get 50 mpg and cost 10k if big government weren't involved.
11/07/08
If there weren't some regulations pushing the industry into changes, they would only make the changes that they think would make a short term profit. So far look where that has lead GM... CAFE opened up a huge loophole for automakers to make "Trucks" that met lower crash, emissions, and fuel economy standards. The MBA's at GM saw the opportunity to slap some leather interiors and soft shocks onto their trucks and market the hell out of them as SUVs. This made for short term profits but no progress toward your fantastical 50mpg $10k car that you think car makers would acchieve given their own choices. There was never anything stopping them from making those 50mpg cars but their own shrot-term profit blinders. Why would they spend money on R&D for 50mpg cars when they were selling the hell out of profitable vehicles based on 30 year old technology? If it were up to the automakers, we'd still have cars spewing noxious gasses and we'd never be able to breathe without resipirators (see Beijing).
11/07/08
The CAFE loophole didn't sell a lot of SUV's... Americans who wanted big honking SUV's BOUGHT a lot of SUV's. There was no loophole in CAFE that said buyers had to purchase SUV's. Really, without CAFE, people probably wouldn't have bought huge SUV's because they could have still bought the huge cars they actually wanted in the first place that CAFE took away.
11/07/08
People used to think it was radical that Volvo marketed safety, then other manufacturers realized that people were actually buying Volvos because they perceived them as safer and they followed suit (since they had to put airbags in due to regs, they might as well brag about them. I'm sure that we wouldn't have airbags in economy cars without the requirements so safety would only be for the rich folks). Now GM et all are getting on the fuel economy bandwagon, why? short term profits. They need to sell cars now, even if it means laughably boasting about SUVs getting 20mpg (in really tiny print they will mention that this is HWY, not city) and claiming that is good fuel economy. Every one of the automakers has fought against changing standards because of short term costs. Toyota didn't make the Prius because they are altruistic, they built it because they were afraid the US automakers were going to eat them for lunch after the US govt investment in hybrid R&D for US automakers in the 1990's. If you want to drive polluting deathtraps, move to India and buy a Tata. I'll stay here with some regulation in my 'free' markets.
11/07/08
Current safety features in cars (airbags, ABS, and tougher crash standards), all mandated the the feds, contribute significantly to vehicle weight.
On the other hand, companies are under no obligation to fulfill some greater moral purpose. They build what they can sell and make a profit on. From 95-2005, that was SUVs, because that's what people wanted (for comparison, look at wagon sales over the same period). For them not to have tapped into that demand would've been foolish from a business perspective.
The flipside of foolishness being that they never planned for a world with high fuel prices. They're paying heavily for that now.
11/07/08
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11/07/08
I, on the other hand, wouldn't mind a bare-bones car, as long as I wouldn't hypothetically have to get options in $3k packages.
11/07/08
Jerks.