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Close your eyes and imagine it's 1979. A first-term Democratic president struggles with unemployment, malaise, high energy prices, and embassy trouble. The landscape of today looks like the landscape of then, but there's one important thing missing: The compact pickup. Where did they go? The small pickup was an indelible symbol of America's lowered expectations in the Seventies and Eighties. Now that crappy times are here again, where are the paper-thin truck beds and wheezy-but-indestructible four-cylinders to pull them?
As car guys, we tend to view things through a certain lens; the design and performance characteristics of a car are what's considered important. The proliferation of cars and trucks that are antithetical to these characteristics, like crossovers and larger, heavier passenger cars, are something that we've collectively lamented for some time.
But to understand why this has happened, we need to view product decisions through the lens of CAFE and its incentives. The choices of American consumers are a factor; we like to buy pickups and SUVs, no doubt. But what if the government's decisions played a part in moving the market, and the very laws set up to ostensibly promote more fuel efficient vehicles ended up doing the opposite?...more at link
I think this article starts to paint a picture of whats happening in the form of car manufacturing and why the Big 3 sometimes need to fly private jets to Washington to ask for a hand out.
The gov't has kinda been shafting them for years in terms of regulations about what they can build and sell, regardless of what the free market(the supposed darling of the damned country) wants and will buy.
After forcing them to take all the power out of their engines, and build front wheel drive cars that they didn't know how to build, so the quality tanked-what did they expect?
At that point, you might as well just hand your automotive industry over to Japan.
I seriously wonder if that's the goal with this stuff...just hand over manufacturing to asia.
This documentary probably best showed how close we were to having 100% electric cars, but for me personally I like asian cars better than the NA ones, but that's just my preference
Europe, south america, australia all get small diesel trucks and cars. We get shafted here.
My friend has an 86 toyota 4x4 pickup with a swapped in vw turbodiesel engine. His mileage doubled, more power/torque, less maintenance.
I have a 4x4 suzuki sidekick with a vw turbodiesel engine swapped in. I'm almost at 40US mpg with the aerodynamics of a brick. More useable power and less maintenance.
Rabbit diesels from the late 70's early 80's could get 50mpg. Even civics from the 90's get better mileage than new ones.
Yes pollution standards and safety standards have increased but so has diesel/gas technology. You can lick the tailpipe of a new diesel they are so clean.
Look at every HD 3/4ton and up pickup. Most are all diesel even though the consumer has a choice of diesel or gas. Every half-ton and light duty 3/4 are all gas because diesel is not available even though manufacturers have smaller 4cyl/v6 diesels readily available. There are so many f150s and dodge hemis out there. Not everybody needs a 6.7L turbodiesel.
Theres a reason why there are so few used vw tdis for sale.
2013 a lot of new diesels will be available even from domestics, but not enough. Bring over some vw polos/lupos 70mpg.
^Do you have a build thread? I've heard of Wranglers/YJ's with TDi swaps but not a Sidekick (hell, HPA makes a kit for it, though it is extremely pricey )
^Do you have a build thread? I've heard of Wranglers/YJ's with TDi swaps but not a Sidekick (hell, HPA makes a kit for it, though it is extremely pricey )
Sidekicks and samurai's are almost mandated to get a little tdi thrown in em haha.
Europe, south america, australia all get small diesel trucks and cars. We get shafted here.
My friend has an 86 toyota 4x4 pickup with a swapped in vw turbodiesel engine. His mileage doubled, more power/torque, less maintenance.
I have a 4x4 suzuki sidekick with a vw turbodiesel engine swapped in. I'm almost at 40US mpg with the aerodynamics of a brick. More useable power and less maintenance.
Rabbit diesels from the late 70's early 80's could get 50mpg. Even civics from the 90's get better mileage than new ones.
Yes pollution standards and safety standards have increased but so has diesel/gas technology. You can lick the tailpipe of a new diesel they are so clean.
Look at every HD 3/4ton and up pickup. Most are all diesel even though the consumer has a choice of diesel or gas. Every half-ton and light duty 3/4 are all gas because diesel is not available even though manufacturers have smaller 4cyl/v6 diesels readily available. There are so many f150s and dodge hemis out there. Not everybody needs a 6.7L turbodiesel.
Theres a reason why there are so few used vw tdis for sale.
2013 a lot of new diesels will be available even from domestics, but not enough. Bring over some vw polos/lupos 70mpg.
I couldn't agree with this more. If you want a diesel truck, its got to be the biggest mofo on the lot, the length of a bus and has the near 7 liter turbo diesel.
I don't want or need that. I want a dodge dakota sized truck with a damned diesel. Something around 3.5 liter. Done.
This is where a lot of these regulations are taking the auto industry, and it was the first thing I thought when they went to washington asking for bailouts, that is, they were almost owed. You people have so single handedly fucked them over the years, that their only answer was bankruptcy.
I couldn't agree with this more. If you want a diesel truck, its got to be the biggest mofo on the lot, the length of a bus and has the near 7 liter turbo diesel.
maintenence is a large portion of the automakers income. clutches, brakes, routine stuff that needs replacing. that's one reason low maintenence electric cars and diesel's aren't made in mass. they don't make the company any long term money. hybrids on the other hand have good PR for being green but still need replaced all the things a regular gas engine does. I heard toyota just dropped their all electric platform.......
^Do you have a build thread? I've heard of Wranglers/YJ's with TDi swaps but not a Sidekick (hell, HPA makes a kit for it, though it is extremely pricey )
Mine is not a tdi it is idi(all mechanical and runs on 1 wire). An actual tdi would be even more efficient and powerful. A company called acme adapters makes adapters for vw diesel to suzuki and toyota transmissions. Yes the hpa kit is very pricey.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gridlock
I couldn't agree with this more. If you want a diesel truck, its got to be the biggest mofo on the lot, the length of a bus and has the near 7 liter turbo diesel.
I don't want or need that. I want a dodge dakota sized truck with a damned diesel. Something around 3.5 liter. Done.
This is where a lot of these regulations are taking the auto industry, and it was the first thing I thought when they went to washington asking for bailouts, that is, they were almost owed. You people have so single handedly fucked them over the years, that their only answer was bankruptcy.
Yah think of all the half ton trucks/vans and tacomas on the road. The manufacturers all have diesels for these applications and I think there would be a large demand for them. But the increase in efficiency could cost governments billions in tax revenue. I really have no clue why they aren't available, I'm just speculating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BA4me
maintenence is a large portion of the automakers income. clutches, brakes, routine stuff that needs replacing. that's one reason low maintenence electric cars and diesel's aren't made in mass. they don't make the company any long term money. hybrids on the other hand have good PR for being green but still need replaced all the things a regular gas engine does. I heard toyota just dropped their all electric platform.......
Diesels are made in mass. Just not for the north american market unless its a larger or hd application. I inspected the semi trucks at an f1 race in the summer cause they were so compact and different than what we have in north america. 8-10L engines when in north america we have 15L engine semi trucks. I'm no david suzuki but that has to be a good jump in emissions reduction and fuel reduction.
There's a lot of green-looking stuff that just pisses me off to no end.
One of the ones that really got my goat was a decision a year or two back from the City of Vancouver that all new cabs that entered service would have to be Hybrids.
Now, the thing that drove me nuts about that was the fact that the local government is now mandating the purchase of a specific type of vehicle for a business. Now, don't get me started on the fact that hybrids (when you look at a full-use vehicle; mileage, cargo, weight, etc etc etc) are not as efficient as diesels. As a cab driver who's working in Vancouver, there will always come a time when you have to hit a hotel for an airport run. Don't tell me that having giant batteries in the back of your Prius helps you get those suitcases in any easier.
Diesel is the technology of the past and future. Even though Diesel is the same price as Petrol right now, it's still at least half price when you look at it on a per-kilometer basis. It really is a question of looking green but turning brown.
^^That type of legislation is the stuff that's holding us back.
It's a liberal mentality that says that the gov't knows best, when it doesn't. We ask a politician to come up with a plan, and a group of his underlings to carry it out and vote for it. We ask you to think out all the possible outcomes of the law, and think of all the given scenarios, and its an impossible task.
A gov't is in the position to create regulation. That's it!
Feel free to create a law that says, " all new taxi cabs need to hit this level of emissions, or a 25% reduction to the current limit" and let the FREE market decide how best to do it. Even better..."your license costs will be based on the emissions and fuel system you choose. Electric is free"
I don't need to think about consequences. I don't need to research a goddamned thing. I can write that in 5 minutes. The taxi cab companies will look and say, "if i buy a car at a surplus(hybrid), but save on all city costs for having one, I will buy one. If not, gas it up mofos."
Scale that up to the cafe standards that are mandating manufacturers to build cars, but not mandating their customers to buy them. It's arrogance on the part of gov't to think that they are smarter than everyone else.
And with an expectation on behalf of the public that their gov't is smarter than themselves, we set them up to fail because we expect these people to be perfect out of the gate. If you have legislation that builds the playground, but leaves the decisions free for the people to play in it, then the people can use their creativity, en masse, to utilize that playground to their best ability. The failure, in that case, rests on the design of the park, not the intended utilization.
So the "playground" in automotive regulation is they want to boost fuel efficient vehicles. Excellent. You can't control how consumers behave, so you can't have a mandate that says, "10% of cars on roads by this date need to be alternative energy" because you can't make people buy them. Hell, no offense to the environment, but I'd sue you too.
Feel free to draft legislation that says, "here are the incentives to help people buy a more expensive alternative energy car...can you build them?" Does it 'cost' money? Well yes, but its money that we aren't choosing to take...kill the tax on any and all alternative energy vehicles. Kill that tax on manufacturing them, and profiting from their sale. So yes, its 'costing' money, but its cost is choosing not to collect it, not a check written out of general revenue. It's paid for. You can't do much more than that. You start writing checks to subsidize, and you run into trouble-because that money needs to come from somewhere.
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