Automakers have done NOTHING in the last 15 years.

[loveable liberal]

Touting new cars getting 30 plus mpg. My 1995 Jetta just got 36mpg. We need choices for crying out loud and we have none. American automakers are complicit in the creation of our situation. It is for this exact reason why government should interfere in the market. I refuse to buy a vehicle that gets below 70mpg (if I can find one that is).

A decent electric car would be nice.

I had a Honda CRX HF that got 55mpg highway (65mpg when I drove to Fargo one time)but of course they had to discontinue makeing those. Phuquers.

[DS1]

1. My sports car gets better than 30 mpg

I saw an ad touting 35 mpg for a sedan and laughed.

[kestrel91316]

2. My total POS Chevy Citation (manual transmission) got about

40 mpg on a road trip when it was brand new back in 1982. I doubt Chevy makes ANYTHING that gets 40 mpg these days.

[truedelphi]

3. A Yahoo news item from abt three weeks ago

A vintage 1950's car was sold to a man who bought it BECAUSE it had been souped up by an engineering class back in the 1970's and with their designs, had gotten over 300 miles to the gallon.

Did Detroit grab the car and study it over the past decades? Nope, in fact at the time it was purchased, it was about to become scrap metal. But the new owner is interested in finding out what makes the car do so well mileage-wise.

Detroit couldn't care less.

[navarth]

13. "Detroit couldn't care less"??

This is the thing I hear so often, it drives me crazy.

Look. Call them 'the Detroit Automakers' or something. Detroit itself is LOADED with people who want the auto makers to wise up.

Detroit COULD care less.

A minor point, but irritating if you hear it 3 times a week.

[loveable liberal]

16. Go Wings!!

They are my second favorite team aside from the Wild. I love Detroit, though I have never been there. Mike Moore is one of my favorites and he is a son of Michigan.

[navarth]

20. Go Wild!!

Thanks for the kind words. We do appreciate it, and send the fondness right back at Minnesota.

[truedelphi]

30. Reprimand accepted. I promise to (from now on) call them

Detroit AutoMakers

[NYC_SKP]

4. Automakers and governments and, of course consumers.

In my opinion, all are 100% to blame as any one of these could have changed this.

Automakers willing to take the long view and pursue a marketing strategy to support new and efficient technologies would have become wealthy in time.

Our government, congress and executive, have done nothing since 1990. Visionary legislation and public awareness campaigns could have saved us. See the dead flat CAFE standards at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy

And, finally, Americans and our consumeristic, self-indulgent, and vulgar tastes in automobiles (OK, some Americans) drive the market and determine what is offered for sale.

Any of these three could have prevented the current state of affairs, but instead, they've almost collaborated to bring us to this sorry state.

[loveable liberal]

15. If you build it, we will come.

True of the CRX which was replaced by the Del Sol which didnt get as good a gas mileage. The Loremo apparently gets over 120 mpg but is not available in the united states. A french vehicle that runs on compressed air is not available here. WTF?? I dont want to pay to pay a premium price to choke the air my kids are going to breath. If I didnt require a car to get to work I wouldnt own one. Ford is closing a Ranger plant in Saint Paul. Why not retrofit the damn thing to make a high gas mileage commuter car. Is it because they are idiots? Probably.

[ingac70]

5. The US automakers are running themselves into the ground on purpose.

to screw hundreds of thousands of retirees out of pensions and insurance. They'll start over after they dump them.

[nashville_brook]

6. that's an intersting thought.

[ingac70]

12. Mark my words...

I used to work for Ford.. this is exactly what those jerks are doing.

[nashville_brook]

18. this is a BIG topic of conversation w/me and the b/f -- we're both car enthusiasts

i drive a hybrid and he drives a modified Acura RSX. lately we've been wondering how the hell American car companies can have fallen so far behind. truly it seems as if they aren't trying on purpose. i mean, come on, they're just now figuring out that the Hummer isn't going to fly w/$4 gas? cars in the 70s got better mileage than they do now.

so, they really WANT to go officially bankrupt in order to renege on healthcare and pensions. what evil phucks.

[havocmom]

9. Yep

Thinkin airlines doing exactly the same thing.

[Kolesar]

22. Wow. Two sentences. Lot of thought went into that

:sarcasm:

[ingac70]

26. That's exactly what they are doing...

bookmark this prediction.

[Zachstar]

7. I keep hearing that cars of the past had 50-60 even 80 MPG with little fanfare

And that was when cars were blocky POSs Grandma car style these days.

What gives? What is making these modern cars such fuel hogs? I heard it was environmental stuff but is it really that bad?

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Had fanfare at the time

We all knew of the cars that could break 50MPG in the late 70's. Of course they weighed perhaps 1000LBs, supposedly had shocks and springs but you couldn't prove it to mosty people who rode in one. And don't forget the blistering 18 second 0-60 times.

For comparison consider some of my former cars.
67 Cutlass Wagon, 330CID, 2BBL, Powerglide 10MPG
73 Torino, 351C, 2BBL, C4 Auto 12MPG
73 Pinto, 1.6L, 4sp manual 23MPG

[tinrobot]

27. Cars have become much heavier

Some of it is safety related (i.e. airbags, antilock brakes, stronger passenger compartments) some of it is luxury related, some of it is that people bought bigger cars, but the general trend has been for cars to get heavier. Here's a chart of car weights, notice how the lowest average weight was in the 80's. That's when you could buy a Honda CRX that got 50+ mpg.

Average car weight by year:

[One_Life_To_Give]

8. Why would they?

If a manufacturer could make the same profit on a Efficient car as a super sized SUV then they would. But while there is perhaps $4000 profit in selling an Escalade, there is only perhaps $200 in a Sprint. Now if people would part with an extra $4000 over current MSRP for these economy cars. There would be lots of them out there.

[loveable liberal]

17. 'bout time automakers accepted market readjustment

just like everybody else. Now they are advertising $3.00 gallons for the first 3 years (or 12,000 miles whichever comes first). Laughable.

[jaksavage]

11. Fuel is too cheap

So no one is motivated to buy economy.
As the price rises so will the call for more efficiency and
willingness to have slower acceleration and less space.
No domestic cars of old got great mileage, it just ain't so.
Claims have been made for eons about mileage boosters etc. Nope, Nope, Nope.

Drive less buy smaller go slower.
Demand clean tailpipes nationwide.

Cheap fuel allowed us to be wasteful.

I remember 12 cent gas.

[kenny blankenship]

14. Government has done nothing in the last 30 years

If you want automakers selling cars in the U.S. not to compete with each other on acceleration performance and engine power during times of low energy costs, you have to either raise the cost of gasoline through taxation or you have to mandate much higher CAFE fuel economy standards. Either way you go there it's "Big Government" constraining the Holy Free Market; and the citizens of this country decided as voters that they didn't want that kind of "gummint interference" with their choices as consumers. They were idiots, Yes, and since they were idiots it was easy for Republican ideologues to flatter them about the wisdom of their choices. "Who knows better what kind of car you should drive? You -or some Gubbermint Bee-your-oh-crat ?!?!? Gubbermint isn't the solution, gubbermint is the problem!"

CAFE fuel economy standards were first passed by Congress in 1975 in response to the oil shock of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The first model year expected to show compliance to interim government targets for fuel efficiency would be 1978. The ultimate efficiency target was placed ten years into the future, 1985, and it mandated a fleet average of 27.5 mpg. In 1975, curb weights for US built passenger cars, which dominated the market, were much higher than today--4,500 lbs was not uncommon for 4 dr sedans. Getting 10mpg was also not uncommon. 27mpg must have seemed like going to the Moon. Cars may have changed a good deal since that time, but more importantly the expectations of the law did not. During that 10 year horizon the law was not revisited, and when the horizon passed in 1985, the law was not replaced. Fuel economy averages peaked in 1987, and declined consistently until 2005. During the "Reagan Revolution" the political winds were simply blowing the other way. Oil prices were also going the other way. The '73 and '79 oil shocks were dismissable as "artificial" price increases, having nothing to do with the intrinsic balance point between real supplies and real demand. A nice little war which we helped to sustain between Iran and Iraq undercut OPEC's pricing power during the latter half of the 1980s. Sources for oil outside the Middle East--the North Sea, Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, Venezuela, Mexico, etc.-- began to come online and reach full production in the 80s, (and now they are tapping out). Despite the CAFE standard's origin in a remote time, pre-Reagan, when cars resembled yachts and America still pumped most of its oil from its own reserves, no new laws were created regarding the fuel economy of passenger cars sold in the U.S. until the year 2007, more than twenty years after the horizon of the original CAFE law was reached.

[loveable liberal]

19. Right you are Ken, Right you are.

[Kolesar]

24. Transportation policy squashed rail and pedestrian options

Cycling, too. Zoning policy pushed grocery stores out of the residential neighborhoods.

[Kolesar]

21. Side impact protection

Cars today are heavier. A Honda Accord is listed as a "large" car on some lists. A Civic or a Cobalt, the small cars on the lot are in the 2600 pound weight range.

Customers have not wanted 2000 pound cars like they were buying during the gasoline price inflation period of the 1970s. The Toyota Echo failed in the market place.

Of course, none of this matters to the "terse, unresearched posts set" on the internet.

[One_Life_To_Give]

23. Could try the Honda Insight

It's close at 60+ MPG.
About 150LBs heavier than your CRX. 13 more HP in the gas engine plus a 14HP electric.
About a foot longer and half a foot wider and taller. Turning radius is increased by a foot as well.

If they cut it down to CRX size it would probably beat 70MPG.

[Kolesar]

25. It is out of production

[One_Life_To_Give]

28. Yeah, I was thinking of used

Actually I was a bit surprised to see that the Insight was actually bigger than the old CRX and had a more powerfull gas engine. Just shows how much we have changed since the last gas crisis. Even our most frugal recent production car has a bigger motor.

[Kolesar]

29. 2-seaters are a difficult market to sell cars in

There has to be a certain amount of sales to keep any car sustainable in the marketplace.