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psarhjinian @ May 7th 2008 11:36AM
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.
Aki @ May 7th 2008 1:57PM
That's a simplistic assessment--simply dropping HP doesn't yield better MPG. You can't compare cars from 1977 because back then they didn't have power everything, didn't have airbags adorning every nook, reinforced steel for better crash ratings. All those amentities equals more weight. Cars today are also much heavier. If you want to compare Accords:
1976 Accord weight 2000 lbs.
2008 Accord weighs 3600 lbs.
Dropping weight means dropping amenities or safety features, which consumers don't seem willing to do.