Motors a question for the americans

yep

 

It has to do alot where you live here(where I live) you see 10th graders go to school in Jags, porsche, cadillacs,and even ferraris and I am not talking about 5 or 10 kids I am talking off about 70% of the students my friend drove a $100K cadillac XLR while I drove a $20K ford crown victoria, you do see a couple of kids with they little toy cars with body kits and such but they are very rare as alot of people don't like ricers.

by the way now I drive eagletalon. gas prices are $2.69 per gallon and that is low.

 

i'd get one if only it wasnt a skoda
i learnt to drive in a 1.8 petrol and a 1.9 diesel and theres not much difference in performace between modern diesels and petrols. plus the insurance on the skoda is less than i was expecting

 

because we are sick of paying £3.79($7.14) for a gallon of unleaded

 

Good Lord! $7.14 a gallon?!? Seems like there'd be a second civil war if our prices were that high.

 

Yea, VERY good point

Why not do something about it? For all those people here who didn't vote in your general election because they didn't like any of the candidates, why didn't you vote for the candidate who said they will lower the tax on fuel? Well, that is, if there was one...

 

Because moaning is a lot easier than doing something about it.

 

This is really interesting, I'm sure most will agree. I wonder what would happen if emissions tests also took into account what was emitted in the production of enough fuel to drive the car a given distance. I'd love to know how much of an effect that would have.

 

we would but the government passed laws that allowed them to call in the army to break up fuel protests

(don't worry i didn't vote for that tax loving b-liar)

 

I've actually thought that myself. Here's a little tidbit that I read on I think CNN about the so-called "green cars" such as the Prius and such. The article states that the amount of emissions that is produced in the production of these cars is actually comperable to the emissions emitted by regular cars over their expected life span. So, in the grand scheme of things, it's no better for the enviornment to drive a hybrid than normal car

Are you kidding me!? Damn man... That's insane!

 

why do americans like my self have gas guzzing cars? becuase we can afford to have them. our gas prices where i live are under 2USD atm. my 1986 monte carlo might only get 22 mpg but i am not worried becuase it such a nice car!

 

Dad - can you think of anything other than emissions testing which is different for engines for European and US markets?

Could you give a few examples of what mpg (US or UK - doesn't matter ) cars get in the states.

2 litre 4-door family saloon
1.6 or 1.8 litre family hatchback (3 or 5 doors)
MPV - 6 seater Ford Galaxy (not galaxie....mmmm...galaxie race car....) sized - I'm not overtly familiar with what you'd class as a 'minivan' over there? 2 litre/ 3 litre engines...

Could it be at all possible that the emissions regs are harming mpg?

*n

 

Yeah - it's widely accepted that the 'greenest' cars to drive are modern direct-injection, common-rail diesels (up to 2 litres, usually around 1600 or 1900cc) and sub-2 litre petrol engines. Cars can be both strong and light which helps with fuel efficiency as does a low CoD.

Yup...

Unfortunately, none of the main parties proposed a drop in fuel tax and we're expecting it to hit £1/litre within the year. That's around 1.90$/litre, heading toward 7.50$/gallon.

Our government seems intent on raping motorists over a barrell at every conceivable opportunity. Fuel duty, road tax (not based on amount of road use), 'safety cameras' placed on wide-open stretches of clear road to catch speeders where they are nothing more than revenue-earners for the local police force, only something in the order of 15% of speed cameras are actually located in accident blackspots.

*n

 

Well, there's the right-hand drive / left-hand drive thing No, seriously, the beggest thing is in fact emissions regulations. Well, and that damn pesky metric system

Okay:

2 litre 4-door "sadan" (I assume that's what a saloon is)...
- My 1993 850glt is a 2.4ltr and gets about 27mpg on average. It's listed as 30mpg, but since it has 213k miles, a 3mpg decrease is understandable.

(new smaller cars according to fueleconomy.gov)
- Chevy Cobolt: 34mpg (2.2ltr) EPA6
- Pontiac GrandAm: 34mpg (2.2ltr) EPA3 / 29mpg (3.4ltr v6) EPA6
- Pontiac Sunfire: 36mpg (2.2ltr) EPA3
- Saturn Ion: 35mpg (2.2ltr) EPA6
- Honda Accord: 34mpg (2.4ltr) EPA6

Engines smaller than 2.0ltr is very uncommon now. 2.3l - 2.4l are most common with small domestic cars. However, for imports:
- Nissan Sentra: 34mpg (1.8ltr) EPA3
- Honda Civic: 37mpg (1.7ltr) EPA2
- Hundai Elantra: 34mpg (2.0ltr) EPA7
- Volvo S80: 30mpg (2.5ltr) EPA7 <- Dad wants this car

Ford doesn't market the Galaxy here. Must be a Euro model. However as far as mini-vans go:
- Chrysler Voyager: 26mpg (3.3l V6) EPA6
- Dodge Caravan: 26mpg (2.4l I4 / 26mpg 3.3l V6 EPA6)
- Ford Freestyle: 27mpg (3.0l V6) EPA?

Larger / Full-Size cars:
- Buick Park Avenue: 29mpg (3.8l V6) EPA6
- Cadillac Deville: 26mpg (4.6l V8 / 300hp) EPA?
- Ford Crown Victoria: 25mpg (4.6l V8) EPA6
- Lincoln Town Car: 25mpg (4.6l V8) EPA6 (same engine as the Crown Vic)

Just for reference...
Sports cars:
- Chevy Corvette: 28mpg (6.0l V8) EPA3
- Dodge Magnum: 25mpg (5.7l V8) EPA3
- Ford Mustang: 25mpg (4.6l V8) EPA2/6
- Pontiac GTO: 25mpg (6.0l V8) EPA3
- Pontiac GrandPrix: 27mpg (5.3l V8) EPA3

Just look at the fuel economy numbers above. I've always believed that emissions regulations were killing fuel milage. I mean when a 2.4ltr car is getting only 5 or 6mpg more than a 6.0ltr Corvette, well, you can draw your own conclusion. In addition, if you look at the web site I mentioned, you will see that for most cars that get high gas milage, they get horrable EPA Air Pollution scores (shown above. The higher the number, the better).

 

Eddie Izzard: "You get out of here with your damn commie metric system!"

Okay, this one is easy - we get essentially the same car in the UK (Sedan = Saloon - thing with four doors and a boot ). Most places say 40mpg motorway, 30mpg urban and a 'combined average' of around 36mpg. - that's UK, so US gallons would be around 30-32mpg, yes? Pretty close.

This says 31mpg for the Accord

Mmm....S80 - not after an 850r?

Those mileages seem to be within a few mpg of the UK models (where relevent) once converted to UK gallons.

I'm off home, will check more models later..

*n

 

Wait, a gallon in the UK is different from a gallon in the US!?

Yea, I wouldn't mind an 850r at all, but they stopped making the 850's. So as far as a new Volvo, I want the S80 Hell, who am I kidding? I'll take any of them new. I think I've become a Volvo freak...

 

yep a UK gallon is 4.54 litres where a US gallon is 3.78 litres

 

Oh my god, what a pain! Whoever came up with the idea of having all different types of measurments should be drawn and quartered. I give up. I'll never figure all this conversion stuff out. I have a tough enough time trying to do currency conversions, now this.

 

Because we're all lazy, heres the gallon comparison:
7(3.78)=4.54(x)
26.46=4.54(x)

So a UK sized gallon in the US would cost $5.83.

 

Heh. My dad's honda has a 1.8L and gets 45 - 50 miles per gallon. It's a red '94 honda civic hatchback with the Vtec* engine. I helped him fix up that car (we bought it on ebay, well used), and I think it's a sweet car.

Not all of us Americans have a need for powerful cars that get bad mileage.

*mm, yes, i stand corrected.