The supposed standards about to be enacted might make performance cars more difficult to get for a while. I am wondering if we aren't looking at new-car performance similar to what we saw from 1973 through around 1987...

This is just more motivation for me to maintain my f-body.

Do you guys think that we will be able to achieve this? Regardless, how slow do you think new cars will get before performance returns?

The Corvette can do it, or get really close (not sure if it will do it under test conditions). GM just needs to only build Corvettes.

I have no idea why in a country with as many intelligent people as this one we cant get over the fact that forcing companies to make products people don't want is not the right way. You want people to use less gas? Make gas more expensive! Announce that gas will be taxed as necessary in order to cost $5/gal. You'll see people lining up to buy Fiestas and Priuses. CAFE is the about the dumbest law on the books.

Yea, but if you tax fuel to $5 a gallon, you'll cause a revolt and I don't think anyone understands how ugly it could get. Also, that runs up the prices for trucking and will cause the prices of goods to rise (as it has recently). So, I'm not sure that taxing fuel is the solution either.

Just quit mucking about with the free market... That's how I feel about it.

Al works in the petroleum industry ... of course he wants $5 a gallon gas.

After this past summer of it, he's sporting a new pusher motorhome at the track.

Jus' a-nudder zample of da man keepin' me down.

Well let's take a broader look at this. Right after the inauguration the ammo tax bill was inntroduced. It has been all but killed in congress, but ammo sales are still "brisk" to say the least. Now they come out with this wildly expensive proposal to raise MPG standards and lower emmissions standards. Could this be the administrations way of trying to stimuilate the auto market by threatening to kill the cars people actually want in the near future? Basically saying, "if you want anything but an econobox, get it now before we tax them out of existance."

I'm not sure this is the intent of the proposal, but it will likely have this effect. Probably not to the same extent as ammo due to the vast difference in cost. But those on the fence about a new car, may be pushed in to the dealer a bit sooner than they had originally intended. If you add in the "Cash for Clunkers" crap they are discussing, it seems even more likely.

stupid - but I don't much care.There is no car I want more than my G8GT. When it wears out, I'll probably buy an old muscle car and update it with current parts. In other words, no new cars for me.

The good thing about this is that cars are going to have to be completely re-designed in order to meet this, which means that a lot of good engineers will be needed.

The bad thing about this is people won't be able to afford these cars, so less will be sold, and automakers will continue to be broke.

As a middle leaning Democrat, I think I need to run for office so I can go smack around the crazy, liberal wackos running the show right now. These standards are insane.

If I was a domestic car maker, I'd kill off half-ton pickups and SUVs right now to even have a shot at this. If you want a "truck" buy a real truck. Yeah, it won't ride as nice, but do you really need a 4x4 Tahoe to take the kids to McDonalds?

39 mpg for cars by 2016.... What is the problem with that? You can absolutely still have badass performance vehicles that get that mileage.... The difference? Size.

The thing I like about this is that it forces vehicles to become smaller and lighter... That will help prepare us for real electric vehicles which will have to be much smaller than the average vehicle on the road today....

Don't take me the wrong way though... I'm sick of more-and-more-and-more law... but this law, it doesn't tell me what to do with my life. The intent of this law is to improve our environmental conditions.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/18...eage-standards/

Priuses and Fiestas are not the answer.. those cars blow chunks.. I had a f'ing 1986 Honda that got 50mpg... And my point here is that we took a wrong turn somewhere when 40mpg became more efficient than 50mpg.

I only used the Prius and Fiesta as examples of US spec vehicles capable of getting 39mpg. Getting mpg in the 40s, 50s, or 60s is not a problem. You can buy a 65mpg Ford Fiesta right now just about anywhere other than the US. The problem is the fact that the vast majority of people in the US wouldnt buy a car with 0-60 time in the mid teens. Consequently, when the Fiesta goes on sale in the US it wont get anywhere near 65mph, rather more like high 30s.

The bottom line is people buy what they want that they can afford. When fuel prices spiked up last year there was a fundamental shift in this country's desires. Suddenly people wanted fuel efficient cars. SUV sales tanked. The effect was immediate, and only collapsed because fuel dropped to under $2 fairly quickly.

The greenies and the government clearly want to reduce energy consumption and improve emissions. Forcing manufacturers to build products people don't want is a backwards way of achieving that. Bump the cost of not being efficient and you'll get the results without the drama.

Taxing fuel doesnt help the oil companies since it will drive demand (and therefore total sales) down.

the problem we are facing is that people want fuel economy but the refuse to sacrifice their 18 cup holders, and power butt vibrators. I'm betting that 86 Honda was pretty basic and you'd die a horrible death if hit by one of todays vehicles. I'm not saying its right...hell...I ride my motorcycle to work every day, no side impact protection there. I agree with making changes to protect the environment. I think the big change should be to make most of the cars in high density areas not run on fossil fuels except big delivery vehicles. The rest of the country still needs fossil fuel cars...ie a hybrid/electric isn't really saving much if you are cruising down the highway at 70 mph.

I think you'd be farther ahead to implement a yearly gas guzzler tax. I'm not suggesting that I'm in favor of this, but raising fuel taxes will kill the trucking industry (maybe Andy J will drop in here with more on this). But taxing the "idiots" (like me) who drive a 12 mpg 1 ton to work in downtown everyday would have an effect. Now, I need my truck to tow, and my post divorce budget won't really support a second vehicle for commuting and the insurance to go with it (that cuts into the already slim racing budget), so I drive my truck. But, if they taxed us based on use...

12,000 miles a year @ 12 mpg is 1,000 gallons of gas. The difference between $2.50 a gallon and $5.00 a gallon is $2.50 (duh). That's $2,500. A $2,500 tax would surely reduce the chances of me driving a 1 ton truck daily. However, to do it properly, you need to GPS the actual mileage of the vehicles (like CA has proposed) and tax you on your actual use. Or, do a once a year mileage inspection where you drop by and they log the mileage against the odometer reading from last year. WV state inspection already logs the mileage on the car at each inspection. It would be easy (in that state, and probably many others) to just log it and bill accordingly. If you tow 50k a year, bring your visa card. If you only tow to local events (50 miles or so) a few times a year, you probably won't really notice the tax. Exempt the trucking industry and businesses (Joe's lawncare will likely go under if they have to pay that on their fleet, and it will hurt utilities pretty bad as well). At that point, I'll just register my truck to frrax and make racing a business (as will many others)...

With all that said, I think it makes far more sense than taxing fuel to $5.00. And, I'd be PISSED if they were to implement it. But if you want to force a fundamental change in the way people use their vehicles, that would surely do it. And, it would do it with far less harm to the cost of goods and services than a straight fuel tax.

That was easy, what other world problems should we fix while we're here?

I don't get it. The overall environmental impact of a Prius is worse than that of an F150. Batteries are made in Japan, from materials that are mined in Canada, and then refined in Europe, before the whole car is shipped to the US. And we want to do this because of environmental concerns?If they can make cars as big as my G8, with the same performance, but gets 60mpg, then I'll buy it. But, I don't want the govt telling car companies what to build. that's the market's job.

I guess I have a unique perspective. I think this whole thing is crap and want the gov't to leave my cars alone. No more CAFE stuff. No fuel tax. No nothing.

Let the market decide what happens. There is a growing trend for people to be more sensitive to the environment, regardless of the hard science that supports/refutes their decisions. If people are willing to buy based on this then the manufacturers will take notice. Let the market drive it and get the gov't out of it equation.

Like I said, I think I am unique.

Keith, I wouldn't call that opinion unique. I strongly agree with you. The way I see it, the government has a few basic jobs granted by the constitiution. The primary job of the government is protect this country from outside agressors. Regulating the auto industry, the economy, the environment, health care, etc. are way outside what they are supposed to do. If we could only cut the govenment to 25% or less of what they are now and get them out of the everday lives of the American people, we would all be far better off.

Really the major effect will be on the owner operators, who don't get a 100% pass-through on the fuel surcharges that the carrier charges. Back when diesel was $4.50+ per gallon, surcharges were running us 40%+ above the base rate on a shipment. The less than honorable brokers were skimming some/most of that extra charge and not passing it along to the people that were actually buying the fuel.

Ultimately we'll pay for it in higher cost of goods - however they decide to collect the $.

I'm becoming ever more convinced that "free market" is a euphemism for "swarm of locusts". That doesn't mean I'm in favor of socialism, but I think the free market is desperately in need of some good dampers - economic/political Konis, so to speak.

Currently, everyone is desperately hoping that someone else will do the right or necessary thing so we don't have to, almost regardless of the topic.

Economically, many companies are embracing the "beatings will continue until morale improves" idea. They keep laying off employees and outsourcing more and more work while they wonder why spending is declining. On a personal level, we all know that unless spending picks up, we may lose our jobs, so we have to bump up the saving and cut spending. We (here at Frrax) really need everyone else to drive efficient cars so we don't have to. And so on.

Personally, I think it might be a pretty good thing if it became so expensive to ship that semi-local production became viable again.

Yeah, perhaps I am bitter as I wait to find out if I'm going to be another free market speed bump. There's more layoffs coming after this round, too. They started before the current downturn, and they'll continue afterward, enabled by the continuous stream of Filipino replacements (oops, I mean trainees) that keep rotating through.

Even beyond that though, the free market has an extremely short-term view, and will gleefully sacrifice the future to boost today. Like I said, I'm not advocating communism/socialism/whatever, or price controls and etc, but the free market can't be left entirely to its own mischief either. There's just far too much collateral damage.

Oil companies and government ... I confuse you 2 all the time. Sorry.

No worries Mitch, I know you're easily confused

I'm all for a completely free market too, but with two conditions:
1) Everyone in the game plays by the same rules. Why is it cheaper to manufacture something overseas? They don't play with the same environmental, health, and safety rules we do.
2) Boundaries are in place that temper the free market's drive for lower price with the more important interests of mankind's quality of life such as breathable air and safe work conditions

I think without boundaries we will always move towards bigger and more powerful cars. The easiest boundary is fuel cost.

I do agree that artificially raising fuel prices would negatively impact shipping companies, but they would just raise rates. In the end the consumer bears the brunt. I think this would also positively shift us towards local manufacturing, more efficient over the road trucks and trains, more efficient distribution networks, etc. In sum, a good thing.

Meanwhile you'd still be able to go buy that 600hp supercar. You might not be able to drive it much...but with the CAFE you wont even be able to buy it because the OEMs wont be able to make them.

I couldnt agree more. The market will decide and it time to quit all the fear mongering about the environment and running out of oil crap.

Somewhere between Chicken Little and the Grasshopper lies an Ant with a clue.

Unfortunately, I encounter very few Ants ....

Al, I'm not even suggesting anything as lofty as fairness, just a longer-term view.

Here's a longer-term view...

Let's just use up all the available resources so that we can get on with the Road Warrior gas scavenging!

I want the big blower sticking through the hood

And of course, we wouldn't want to do anything to reduce our dependance on foreign oil, now would we?
Like maybe build some nuclear plants, so we can phase out the use of coil and oil for electricity?
Or drill domestically? Gee there is a thought.
I seem to recall both presidential candidates talking about these things during the campaign.
What happened to those ideas?

no - instead we are throwing billions at solar and wind, that currently contribute less than 2% of our energy demand. That isn't going to make a dent any time soon.

And then leave the free market alone to decide what cars to build.
Of course the government didn't take over 2 of our 3 car companies to let the free market decide anything....

What happened? Oil was cheap for a few months. That's all it takes to forget.

Late last year though, I did hear an interesting argument against more drilling ... yet. Do we want to be the first to run out, or the last?

Ideally we'd want to be the first to not require oil!

Good discussion. Lets not forget that oil over $100 was a market phenomenon (and I think it was totally contrived), and was not based the cost to produce and deliver plus a fair profit, just plain old fashioned old fear and greed. The bottom fell out of oil prices because the demand dropped dramatically due to the world wide economic conditions (brought on in part by the high price of energy).

I think it is a litttle known national security strategy to use up the rest of the world's oil before we use up ours. You might recall that when oil was over $100 a barrel, there was big talk about drilling everywhere including the moon and using whale oil shale, and energy producing algae, making cars that get 100 mpg, yada yada.

When the price went below $80 all that stopped all at once. Now we're creeping back as demand slowly increases.

I spent many years in the electric and gas utility industry, and if wind and solar were economically feasible without government subsidy, they would have invested in it 10, 20 & 30 years ago. When oil is over $100 a barrel, the wind and other stuff looks good economically, but not when oil is $40-60.

Your opinion may vary.

bock

I'm still in that industry ... specifically a nuke. But the company I work for has a very diverse enegy generating protfolio ... nuke, dirt, gas, turbine, and wind. Nuke is base load as are the dirt burners. Natural gas and turbine are peaking units, coming on-line when demand requires it.

The wind generation side of the house is an interesting phenomenon. Where sustainable wind is prevelant is also a sparsley populated area. Consequently, there isn't a large infrastructure for delivery. You can generate all the power you want, but if you can't get it to the end user, it does little good.

And guess what ... land owners want huge dollars for 345KV power line easements, even if the property gets less than 10" of rain a year and can only sustain 10 head of cattle per section of land. In other words, the land is all but worthless, except for an easement. right now, the costs are a part of building the wind generators, but I can forsee eminent domain coming into play.

Another piece of that puzzle, is that building renewable energy platforms (wind, solar, geo-thermal) yields global warming credits. So, if a company puts 100 megawatts of renewable energy on-line, it can take credit for 100 coal burning megawtts (or some formula like that) in the eyes of the air quality control world. So the cost of burning coal goes down.

The long range plan is to retire the dirt burners as more alternative energy becomes available and deliverable. But for now, it makes good business sense to spend the 100s of millions of dollars in building renewable sources and taking credits vs investing in scrubber technology to help clean up emmissions on plant due to retire in 10 or 15 years. It might not help much today, but the future is looking cleaner ...

It's an interesting juggling act ...


Me at work ...

For electric power, I think nuclear and solar are our best alternatives, despite their drawbacks. At this point, oil is almost exclusively used for transportation (include racing in that), and as base stock for all the plastic things we love so much.

Coal is too environmentally dirty (in a lot of ways, not just emissions) for a long term fix.

It just so happens I helped develop an international carbon exchange, and even now I am torn on the wisdom of this approach (the carbon cap and trade thing). Its relies on international government regulation, which I hate. I think energy conservation and alternative energy development is the winning approach long term. To the extent that carbon cap and trade promotes conservation, I am for it. If it is just another money making scheme to suck goverment revenue out of the energy industry, or allow for the poorer planners to buy their way out of modernizing, then no.

But whatever way we go, it still has to meet the fundamental test of economics...at least in my book. I don't think anybody in their right mind believes the oil thing is sustainable long term.

Race while you can....conserve what you can

bock

I think the most chilling view into the future of the automobile industry post the 39mpg CAFE standard is in the latest C&D. There is an article comparing a 1998 metro to two new hybrids.
HP ranged from 55-98
0-60 range from 10sec to 15 sec
1/4mi took 18-20sec with trap speeds in the 60's to 80's
and the MPG?
with normal driving they got 38-42
Which is right around the AVERAGE of this new CAFE standard.

So what does that tell you?

What it tells me is we can kiss goodbye any and all performance cars in this country that get below 25mpg.

Nothing like a 550i, GTG8, E550, no AMG or M cars whatsoever, no 911's, no Evos or WRXs, no Mustangs or Camaros with V8s, no RX8, no GTR, no corvette.
Pretty much any and all of the cars that we care about will be gone.

this has to be the biggest F-U to the american people ever in terms of a pure assault on our freedoms and liberty.
And for us car guys, it hits home pretty hard.

I cannot even put into words how this makes me feel - it is simply devastating to me, because cars have been one of the biggest joys and passions in my life for 20+ years. And now the government is taking that away from me. I am not a happy camper. We need to do something about this - make our voices heard. I don't think too many people on here are very supportive of this policy and what it will do to one of our favorite industries. I do not intend to take this quietly.

I'm not as much in the "Doom & Gloom" camp as c4racer..

Prior to the cam, but with 4.10 gears and a full compliment of bolt-ons, my T/A could pull down 25mpg on a road trip. My friend (who drives like a EPA tester) averaged close to 30 driving it from NC to PA.
Or, look a the C6 'vette - rated at 26mpg.

This reminds me of the dawn of Electronic Fuel Injection - "Say good bye to hot-rodding forever!" - and now look at us... it's second nature now...and offers us unprecedented control over the engine... 505hp that will last 100,000 miles, while knocking down 24mpg on the highway.. unheard of!

What it'll take is an advancement in engine design...

Eskimo - That was part of the reason that I started this post. I was wondering if it weren't 1973 again and it is going to take decades to get back to significant performance vehicles - that's the optimistic view. Or, we've finally challenged engineers with an impractical problem to solve and real performance will be relegated to what is already in existence.

It is possible to come up with a requirement that will permenantly kill (from the perspective of my lifetime) performance cars. If we make CAFE 100mpg, I think that is out of reach. The current values proposed are lower but are they going too far? Time will tell. One thing I am certain of is that we are going to see some wonderful modern versions of things like the K-car, Fairmont, Chevette, and (1975) Civic. I am just wondering for how long or have we really killed it this time.

I see alot of turds in my future.

I see a lot of auto parts in my future, but no new cars.

I have come to view a lot of things from a more parental perspective, though. How do "you" lose freedoms? By not (collectively) using them responsibly.

I used to feel like you guys....ie they will kill our hobby. I grew up in the 8 mpg era for performance cars...and that was highway mileage!

I think technology will overcome a lot of our concerns...but it might not look like something we are familiar with today. EFI scared the hell out of me when i first looked at it. Now...well its old hat.

My 383 powered Z28 puts 450hp to the wheels at WOT, but got 26mpg driving home from the races. This was unheard of prior to 1990. Impossible they said at the time.

I think we have a lot to look forward to.

bock

The glass is half full
The glass is half empty
The stuff in the glass is piss (Mitch)

10yrs from now we'll be talking about ultra-capacitors, enabling higher currents, modifying motor controlllers, super-cooling brushless motors...and probably accelerating faster than our cars can today.

There is something good that comes from mpg - lightweight cars. It's about dang time again, too. And don't forget the best thing those lightweight cars are good for: engine swaps. Also don't forget crate motors. Yes, we may be entering a period of fewer cars that are fast right off the showroom floor, but that doesn't mean the hobby is dead.

Frankly, things haven't been headed in a direction I'm interested in anyway. What I want is economical 2+2 almost-Vettes, not almost-Impalas.

Batteries and capacitors are heavy, so are big electric motors. Comparing energy storage, the energy density of gasoline is 46 mJ/kg. Good lithium ion batteries are around .45 mJ/kg. That's right, two orders of magnitude of difference, and some of the new lithium ion batteries (like A123's) are very good but don't hold a candle to gasoline in terms o energy storage. Ultra capacitors are even worse, with the best coming in at .1 mJ/kg, with many at .05 mJ/kg. That's 3 orders of magnitude worse.

For going fast, I still want gasoline. Energy storage and electric motors are getting lighter, but gasoline is good, good stuff.

And I'll make sure you have a dose in your fuel tank at Hallett ...

Isn't Formula One using regenerative braking now?

Yes, KERS: Kenetic Energy Recovery System. Most teams aren't running it, and the ones that have played with it have removed it for at least 1 race this season because it caused issues (like inconsistency during braking). It is unclear if the cars using it are actually faster (Brawn hasn't touched it, and they've been at the top of the speed charts all year). Their system weighs 35 kg and adds 80 hp when fully charged.