Wow, lots of responses to this one . . more than I imagined.
David wrote:
>The higher fuel economy cars died on the vine so to speak because fuel
>became cheap / readily available again after the 70's early 80's. The Civic
>that you mention was rated at 67 highway and 55 in the city - in 1984 ! Of
>course, dropping the CAFE requirements did not help anyone either in the
>long run.
By 1982? I know my memory's fuzzy, but I thought gas was considered to be
expensive at least up to the mid-1980s. Where's that handy-dandy chart of
historical prices of gas inflation-adjusted for today when you need it?
Was the EPA rating of the CRX HF that high? I thought it was 40s city, 50s
highway. I also know the later Civic VX (1992 to 1995 ish?) was rated
similarly, though it got a power bump from 60 horses to about 90 due to use
of VTEC.
I had an 87 CRX HF myself, and while I never got fuel economy in the 50s
(then again I never drove it extensively on the expressway), it still did
damn well, considering it was still using a carburetor. I think I got a
best of 47MPG on one tank, using the A/C, and in rush hour traffic on some
days.
I did think it could go more than 90 MPH, but I never had the opportunity
to test it.
It was great, though. I was a student, working part time, and spent 95% of
the time in the car either just myself, or one other person. An excellent
commuter car.
Kenneth wrote:
>My thought is that the engine was so underpowered to begin
>with that adding 200 pounds to the vehicle would have made it
>completely unsafe to operate in traffic. There is more to the
>equation than just economy numbers. Remember the last time you got
>behind a Moped/scooter in traffic? I imagine those things get
>very high MPG, but they can barely keep up with traffic and it
>would be absolutely suicidal to attempt to operate one on the
>highway, which is why it's illegal to do so.
Ah, as I understood it, they would've made the engine bigger or otherwise
increased power in some way to compensate for the extra weight. At least,
that's the basis I was using to assume a 40% drop in fuel economy.
Again, though, this was with 1982-and-earlier technology.
I see things like the Smart car, an egg-like 2-seater that uses a turbo
3-cyl and gets around 50-60 MPG. Also, there was some sort of other
vehicle that was being designed (by a German company?) that ran on a small
diesel engine, seated 2, weighed around 1000 lbs, and could get notably
over 100 MPG highway, and I think 70 or 80 city? Can't recall, but I did
read that one.
I came across another article in my web-wanderings that was actually
complaining about the weights of vehicles. It reiterated the point that
larger-but-lighter vehicles are the safest, not to mention helpful for fuel
economy. It also had buried in there a note that said meeting safety
requirements added around 125 lbs to a car in the mid-90s, and so the
author was going for a worst-case and doubling that amount to say today's
safety requirements add 250 lbs to current vehicles.
Plus, I figure, the Honda Civic (well, up to but not including the newest
one), and the Honda Insight managed to be VERY lightweight, and meet modern
standards (the latter I think weighs in around 1800 lbs or so?)
Anyway, all this meandering aside, I guess what I'm trying to figure is
whether or not, with the technology available today, would it be possible
to build an economy car running strictly on gasoline, AND meeting modern
standards for crashworthiness, that could meet or exceed what the Saturn
Project did in 1982? I wouldn't expect it to be fast, but fast enough to
be useable on public roads (by way of comparision, my CRX HF was rated at
58 SAE Net HP and 90 SAE Net ft-lbs, at 4400 and 2400 RPM respectively).
I'd say maybe the worst thing to add to it that most people would want
would be air-conditioning, from a weight-penalty point of view. It's an
economy car, so I wouldn't imagine a laundry-list of power gizmos would
come standard.
Could it be done today strictly from a technical point of view? Up until a
few months ago, I'd've said unlikely, until I found out what was achieved
in 1982.
- Joe Vahabzadeh
