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Those stronger passenger compartments, more catalytic converters, airbags, and other improvements cost weight. Not to mention all the nice power features on modern cars.
I drove a 1990 Honda Civic for a few days. My aunt's in Illinios. Fun to drive; had a stick shift.
But it was a tiny car. "Plenty of room for 5"... for a short trip. Nothing in there was powered, either. She actually bought it new and it didn't have a radio! At her request!
At the time I was used to driving a 1987 Ford Thunderbird, which was nearly twice the car the Honda was. So the go-kart-ness of the Honda was a pleasant surprise.
But I know which one I would have preferred for an everyday car: the T-Bird. I was in no less than 4 accidents with that Ford, the worst of which was when a little Japanese sports car rear-ended me at about 15 miles per hours. It shook off every hit, and except for the pickup truck that I rear-ended lightly, the damage done to the other cars (an Audi, a Volkswagon, and that little sports car (Nissan Pulsar?)) was far, far worse than the damage done to the T-Bird. In one case I rear-ended a Jetta. The Jetta's rear bumper and fender were ruined; the T-Bird had two tiny spiderweb impact points in a piece of silver trim in the front bumper.
If I'd been driving the Honda it probably would have been totalled.
Now there's no denying that Japanese engines were more efficient than ours; look at the environment they came from. High-compression engines with overhead-cams and 4-valves-per-cylinder get more power per gallon of gas and more horsepower per cylinder, and having a broader powerband and higher engine rev limit allows more efficient gearing. So the Japanese had that going in their favor. And they had that as a result of the high-gas-prices environment of Japan.
That T-Bird I drove had a 120-hp 3.8L 6-cylinder engine: tough and reliable as hell (it had 255k miles on it when the head gasket finally blew), but modern engines makes much more horsepower with much less displacement.
My current car gets 173hp from a 2.5L 4-cylinder engine, which is about par for modern engines. A modern big V-6 would now make about twice as much horsepower as that old V-6 but have similar mileage.
The fact is that when it comes to highway cruising, the engine matters much less than the aerodynamics of the car it is driving.
My new Subaru Impreza (a 2005 wagon) get about 26 MPG on the highway cruising at 80mph. The car it replaces, a 1989 Olds Regency, got about 23 MPG under the same condiditons. The Subie is probably a bit narrower and a bit taller than the Olds, and it has AWD, so there's a bit more mechanical drag than on the FWD Olds. But both cars are basically boring the same size hole in the air as they drive.
Now compare that to the 1990 Honda, which is considerably shorter and narrower than either of those cars, you're probably cutting the frontal area by 30%, which would reduce the power requirements by 30%, which would boost the highway mileage by about 43%... which is about 35 MPG, which is about what you were getting. And if you drive slower than me, that number should go up... perhaps to 39?
See how it works? :-)
That T-Bird I used to drive would get in the low 20's on the highway as well; it cruised at about 2200 RPM at highway speeds, right about at the power peak for the engine.
For city driving the requirements are different; a lot depends on the car's weight, very little on aerodynamics, and that is where the little cars shine. It takes a lot less power to move a Civic up to 40 mph than the Regency or the T-Bird!
What happened during the 80's and 90's and is going on today is that car companies met the CAFE standard (which I believe is now 25mpg), then began working to increase horsepower. Remember, a 1987 Ford Escort only had 86hp; the same-year Honda Civic only had about 60 or 65hp. Those numbers went up and up and up while maintaining the CAFE standard. A Ford Focus has now 130 or 140 hp while maintaining similar gas milage standards. A 2008 221-hp Ford Fusion has the same fuel economy as a 1990 Ford Taurus with only 140 horsepower!
Nobody wants a wussy car; it's no joy to have to constantly flog an underpowered car to merge with traffic or climb a small hill. I had to do that with a 1987 Suzuki Samurai... it wasn't very fun!
If we had kept increasing the CAFE standard, you would have seen cars such as the Ford Escort keeping about the same horsepower but with better and better fuel economy instead of keeping the same fuel economy but with better and better horsepower.
The reason people continued to by large cars and SUVs is that for a small sacrifice in fuel economy you get a big gain in material comfort, usefulness, and safely. Conversely, it takes a large sacrifice in comfort to get a small increase in fuel economy. And when gas was cheap and we weren't about the environment so much, people didn't want to make big sacrifices for a small gain in fuel economy. People said "Okay, I'll spend an extra $100 a year in fuel to drive this much more flexible Taurus or Lumina instead of this Escort or Cavalier because we have to drive 80 miles to family fuctions several times a year and it will be more comfortable for those long trips".
:shrug:
The only reason NOT to own a large, hulking SUV or pick-up truck is the gas consumption. Once we get to the point we have all-electric vehicles charged up by environmentally-friendly energy (solar, wind, nuclear fusion, etc.) then it won't matter if you drive a behemoth Suburban or F-150. If it costs you $300 a year total to power your Ford Explorer and $100 a year to power your Honda Fit, then people generally aren't going to buy the Fit.
Well, of course there are other factors, such as retail price and insurancse costs, but you get the idea.
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