...I haven't had to go through the November-April routine of swapping out summer tires for snow tires and vice-versa come Spring since 1993. My Cadillac Brougham was retired from winter duty that November. It would be a pain to have to go through that routine again.
I agree that it can be a slight pain depending on what your storage options are and if you do the swap yourself. The difference between dedicated "snow" and all season can be dramatic even on AWD cars. I have a AWD 3 series and I think snows are worth the extra hassle. I don't know if traction control has made snow tires obsolete. Do snow tires even come in the new sizes these days? I haven't bought a set since 1989.
I think people will always buy dedicated snow tires, especially since they have really advanced in the last few years. They come in about any size you can think of. I've seen some 911's with snow tires this year. They are even doing run flats now too.
I agree wholeheartly with you on your statement. To have a sub-par product as your bread-and-butter $ maker is suicidal. Ford might as well just close the door and call it quits. The 500 is such a flop I can't believe it. How many units did they sell anyway? We gave up on owning an "American" car long time ago - tired of being their R&D guinepig. When you consider the reliability, quality, styling, re-sell value, I don't see the Big Three has anything to offer in the mid range family sedan arena. What Detroit has to offer may be their latest effort on re-styled muslecars, which should capture some market shares in the coming years.
Here's an interesting dichotomy at Ford regarding the crash tests. As kevmo pointed out the 500/Monterrey are the Best-in-Class at the IIHS. Obviously Ford knows how to make a vehicle that exceeds everyone else's vehicle in this regard.
What happened with the Fusion? Did they intentionally decontent it in design and safety features because it was the low-end and these customers don't deserve worldclass engineering? Or is the Fusion/Milan just replacing the Taurus/Sable as rental fodder?
Either way it's a horrible mistake. Not putting their best engine in the 500 from the very beginning ( see Avalon 3.5L ) put a knife in that vehicle's heart. Why? Then this with the Fusion/Milan.
WASHINGTON -- Hoping to reduce harmful mercury emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, auto industry and environmental groups said Wednesday that they have agreed to start a national program to collect mercury switches from scrapped automobiles.
The program, announced as a tentative agreement by the EPA and several groups, would recover and recycle the pellet-sized switches before the vehicles are shredded and crushed for recycling. Mercury switches have been used in antilock brakes and in convenience lights in trunks and under the hoods of vehicles built as late as the 2002 model year.
It would build upon programs used by some states and try to prevent mercury from being released into the environment when the vehicles are crushed and shredded. Collection programs are currently used in Arkansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Coal-burning power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States, according to the EPA. The mercury switches, which automakers began phasing out of their vehicles in the mid-1990s, are the nation's largest manufacturing source of toxic mercury.
All Aboard the Friendship: China Gives Fidel Castro a Limo Date posted: 03-09-2006
BAODING, China — Great Wall, one of the biggest private pickup and SUV manufacturers in China, bagged an order for 660 pickup trucks to be exported to Cuba.
The first batch was recently sent, and along with them went a unique gift: a one-off stretch-limo SUV.
The 264.5-inch stretched vehicle is based on the Hover, an SUV developed and produced in-house by Great Wall. According to a Chinese media report, the limo has a highly luxurious interior with leather trim, LCD TV, a stereo system with DVD and MP3 players, touch screens, and a nicely equipped bar with a refrigerator.
Its powerplant may be the only modest part of this vehicle: a 2.4-liter, 125-hp four-cylinder gasoline engine supplied by Shenyang-Mitsubishi.
What this means to you: Castro should enjoy this little perk since he couldn't exactly ride around in a Lincoln or a Hummer.
Got a question to all of you. If fuel prices are such a concern for automakers, then why aren't we seeing more 4-Cylinder cars ???? They can get high horsepower numbers by adding turbocharging and I find it personally weird this hasn't became more popular trend and a way to save the consumer a buck at the pump. He/She doesn't have to give up performance either
A guy I knew before he got married, had kids, and virtually vanished from the face of the earth had one of those Turbocharged 4-cylinder SVO Thunderbirds. He later traded it for a Taurus SHO.
produced from something like 1983-88? When the 1989 style came out, for awhile there was no V-8 option at all, just the base 140 hp Vulcan 3.8 and the supercharged one, which put out something like 230 hp IIRC. Eventually they started putting 302's in them, and then the 4.6 OHC.
if it was a 4-cyl, it was turbocharged. I believe they used the little Brazilian 2.3 OHC 4-cyl that the Pinto, Fairmont, and 4-cyl Mustangs had. There was another 2.3, an OHC job that was derived from the old Falcon 6, which surfaced in the 1984 Tempo and the Bronco-II/Ranger pickups. I think it got massaged out to a 2.5, but was eventually replaced by a different 2.5.
Pinto = Ford 1971-80 Vega = Chevy 1971-76 Falcon = Ford US 1960-1970 Fairmont = Ford 1978-1982? Was replaced in 1983 with the small LTD - basically the same car with a sloping nose.
There was a 1970 1/2 Falcon based on the low-end Ford midsize platform.
actually the Fairmont lasted through 1983. The Tempo ostensibly replaced it. The Granada went to the Fairmont platform for 1981-82, and it passed off as Ford's "midsize" car. So you had the exact same platform with the exact same dimensions and interior room serving as both "compact" (Fairmont/Zephyr) and "midsize" (Granada/Cougar sedans). Then, small LTD/Maquis replaced the Granada/Cougar sedans.
This wouldn't be the only time that a car would get passed off as being more than one size class. The 1976-80 Aspen/Volare was considered a compact, while the 1977-79 LeBaron/Diplomat were considered "upscale compacts", basically kind of like what the '75-80 Granada had been to the Maverick. Then for 1980-81 the LeBaron/Diplomat were considered "midsize", although they were the same size inside. The coupes were actually smaller, because in '80-81 they put them on a shorter wheelbase. Then for 1982-89, they tried to pass these things off as "full-sized" cars.
To be fair though, as compacts they were bigger, both inside and out, than any other compact of the time, and roomier inside than many pre-downsized midsizers. And as intermediates, they were about on par with GM's downsized intermediates. Not quite as wide inside, but more legroom, headroom, less wheel well, driveshaft, and transmission hump intrusion, etc. And as full-sized cars, well they didn't weigh much less than a downsized Caprice or Crown Vic, and really weren't THAT much shorter. And had comparable legroom and actually better headroom!
A turbocharger doesn't do much for fuel economy, since the power still has to come from somewhere. The main reasons for turbo development in the late '70s and a good chunk of the '80s were easier emission control, and displacement taxes in Europe and Japan. The development of EFI and computer engine controls on domestics at the end of the '80s addressed the emission issue, and there are no displacement taxes in the US, so the domestic engineers went back to making the bigger, more powerful V6s and V8s they were comfortable with.
Got a question to all of you. If fuel prices are such a concern for automakers, then why aren't we seeing more 4-Cylinder cars ????
Americans like and (ahem!) need larger cars. Larger=heavier. Heavier cars need horsepower and torque to pull them. You can get lots of HP from a turbo-charged 4 cylinder, but you would have to gear the car low and run the engine at high RPM to compensate for the lack of torque in a small displacement engine. When you run any engine at high RPM, gas consumption skyrockets. Bottom line is, there's no free lunch.
You can also think of it like this: It takes a certain amount of gasoline to pull a certain amount of weight. Heavy cars are always going to need a lot of fuel to motivate them.
If you are willing to accept really poor performance, you can get pretty good mileage from a small engine on a heavy car. However, most people can't tolerate their car having dog-slow acceleraiton.
The best solution? Lose weight! Even a Hummer-sized vehicle could get 25mpg if it were light enough. But, lightness is way more expensive than fuel right now!
>Got a question to all of you. If fuel prices are such a concern for automakers, then why aren't we seeing more 4-Cylinder cars ????
I think it is due to a combination of factors. 1. Maybe a lot of Americans think the current prices are just a temporary thing and that prices will drop back below to the $1.50-1.75 a gallon range. 2. General affluence - a lot of people can afford to pay the current prices. Or, they are paying the current prices instead of doing something else with the money like putting it in savings. The natioanl savings rate was negative last year, meaning people spent more money than they made. I think the last time the savings rate was negative was during the Depression. 3. I don't think the Big 2.5 want people buying smaller cars (where you are more likely to find 4 cylinder engines). "Small cars small profits, big cars big profits." GM pushed SUVs awfully hard during the Olympics. There was a reason for that.
Yes, andre1969, you must also be my age (born '69?).
We had the (mis)fortune of seeing the very worst that the US car industry could construct. And, for me at least, growing up in the southern mid-west and being of modest means, what was available to us was the dregs. No '69 Chevelles for us. We rode around town in old Grands Prix, Ford XL's and LTD's (the big'uns from the seventies), Granada's (Grenade - a), Fairmonts, and the occasional clapped out Thunderbird or Cougar. The occasional weird friend would have an early CVCC (the civic, before it was officially a civic). We were brought up to understand that American cars built before 1973 were "it". Everything else was slow, knocked and pinged, and would only get worse in the future. We had no way of knowing that horsepower would ever come back. I had two friends whose fathers were crazy or just really cool, and allowed them to have actual musclecars. An old 351 XR7 Cougar and a 66 Goat. Even though they were relatively stock, they would blow by the rest of us like we were sitting still. The days of good cars were long gone, so we thought.
Got a question to all of you. If fuel prices are such a concern for automakers, then why aren't we seeing more 4-Cylinder cars ????
Not to be too pointy... actually the majority of the US is driving 4c autos, Rocky. As I know you are closely involved with the Big 2.5 I can understand why you might not see this trend but the following stats should be enlightening.
Round numbers: #1 Camry 450,000 sales ( 400,000 in 4c ) #2 Accord 420,000 sales ( 375,000 in 4c ) #3 Corolla 375,000 sales ( 100% as 4c ) #4 Civic 360,000 sales .. ( 100% as 4c ) #5 Altima 300,000 sales ( 250,000 in 4c )
Of the top 5 selling autos in the US nearly all are 4c with HP ranging from 130 - 175.
Then factor in , Sonata's, Focus', Sentra's, Elantra's and others and the numbers are way up in favor of 4c over 6c.
This is what this tells me. A) Detroit has swung and missed on understanding what the US market wants since it keep trying to sell V6's to a 4c buying market. or.. They realize that making profitable 4c Compact/Midsize cars is not economically feasible with their current cost structure so they've given up on it.
Not sure of the numbers, but that seems accurate enough. The V6 variants of these top selling cars tend to be a small proportion of the total units sold.
The trucks and SUV's may be highly inefficient, but the passenger cars that many of us buy tend to be 4-cylinder cars, despite the horsepower wars and the hype.
Here are a few theories why the Big 2.5 haven't cared much about this market in the US:
-Margins aren't high enough for their tastes or to make these cars interesting. (They seem to sell what they do sell just to meet CAFE standards.) That these cars are good gateway cars to a younger audience, or that the transplants can sell such cars with perfectly reasonable margins, seem not to resonate with management.
-Their legacy technologies mostly comprise older pushrods that they've opted to refine. Rather than invest in building an excellent four-cylinder motor, they have focused their efforts on either improving older technology (GM 3800 and 5.7 liter/350) or making a better V8 (Ford's very good 4.6 liter). Again, they go for the margins per unit, rather than devote much energy to building an excellent 4-cylinder that will find its way only into econoboxes and cheaper family cars.
-The compact car segment is highly competitive, less so than the truck markets. They have devoted their energies to the truck segment, where they stand a better chance of making more money, and are not really trying to beat the transplants in the retail subcompact or compact segments in which the transplants dominate.
Very much the strategy of a beancounter looking at margin, rather than a long-term manager with a view toward building market share. When times were good, a strategy to compete in the lower end of the car market would have simply reduced profits, which would have made no friends on Wall Street. But now that fuel prices and tastes are shifting, that shortsightedness is catching up with them.
I would submit that part of the reason more of the 4cyl variants are sold is because you can't get a manual transmission on the V6's. Some people prefer manuals in that particular class of car, or maybe just don't want to drop an extra $2000 for the automatic.
I appreciate ya'lls feedback and all of you listed good reasons why 4 Cylinders from the Big 2.5 aren't popular sellers.
I do think a 4 Cylinder Northstar could be a popular engine. Add a Turbo and mid 200's in horsepower would be realistic. I know GM is trying to compensate with DOD in their V-8's. However that option is only available on upper trim levels and puts it out of reach with the camcord.
Honda's proven with their new turbo 4 cylinder that you don't have to sacrifice power to get good gas mileage in the RDX. I do think this engine choice will help honda make the RDX a popular ute in the world of rising gas prices.
However the new Buick Enclave should get respectable fuel economy, especially if and when it get's a hybrid. I'm not going to guess if the RDX and Enclave will be direct competitors because the RDX is a sport ute and the Enclave is a little softer and will be more of a luxury ute. I will say this....They both are good lookin' midsize SUV's that will serve their customers very well. If I was a buyer of either one I'd be happy. BTW- My wife and I got into it over the RDX. She thinks it's ugly but did like the front end and interior. The rear end turned her off and I told her I liked the whole vehicle alot. :P To Her !
-Anyways keep up to good posts ya'll :shades:
Rocky
P.S. I was a little dissapointed the Acura RDX didn't get the 6-speed manuel option Maybe someday ?
Not really.. 95+% of the 4c Camry's are AT. Well in excess of 90% of the Corolla's ( all 4c ) are AT also.
What seems misunderstood in some places is that the American buying public in general is in no way interested in ubber-horse power or performance. Adequate is acceptable. All modern 4c have adequate power now.
Very point on about not wanting to drop $2K on V6 power not needed in daily driving.
What seems misunderstood in some places is that the American buying public in general is in no way interested in ubber-horse power or performance. Adequate is acceptable. All modern 4c have adequate power now.
Well, this is true for small cars weighing less than 3500 pounds. A Big 3 land yacht typically weighs well over 4000 pounds.
Yes, just "adequate" is acceptable, but a 4 cylinder can't even pull a 2 ton+ car even adequately to most tastes. You would have to hop it up and gear it down, then you get worse gas mileage than a V8.
True you have to match the engine to the vehicle size but that's precisely the point. Most of the American public each has it's own personal vehicle. It's most often one driver per vehicle and one driver doesnt need a 2-ton+ vehicle for daily use. The 'family' vehicle normally now is a minivan or SUV.
This demographic is so much different than in the past when one vehicle was all that a family had and it had to carry everyone.
The big land yachts are mostly for older folks as has always been the case.
Well, I was born in 1965 so I still got to see a few really great American cars even though I was very young. I was very concious of the precipitous decline of American cars through the 1970s. Most notable was when my Grandmom traded her excellent 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne for a new 1973 Vega. Even to my eight year-old eyes I could tell this car was constructed nowhere near as well as what Chevy made before.
Keep in mind that many companies will build the same engine with various materials depending on the application, sometimes even mixing (Iron block, aluminum heads). Dodges V-10 is aluminum in the Viper, cast iron the the Ram.
Also, it was the "state of the art" OHC, aluminum engine that destroyed the Vega's reputation. The optional (and dated even at that time) "iron duke" was probably one of GM's most reliable engines. The Vega engine was later recast in iron, solving many (but not all) of its reliability issues.
State of the art materials in this day and age would be ceramics, carbon fiber and to a lesser degree, titanium. I'm not seeing alot of these materials on Asian cars these days.
For not having an all alloy engine, I'm gonna go ahead and put my wager in for bankrupcy protection coming up. That's a very sad argument. I know the "Iron Duke" later the "Tech 4" was a reliable engine. But it also had pushrods. That's another discussion too. You don't see any Asian cars with those either.
We are discussing the bread and butter models. Camry Malibu, Accord, Civic, Cobalt, even 300C. I don't think you are gonna see much carbon fiber or titanium in these cars.
For racing, no, Aluminum is not exactly state of the art. However, it wouldn't make much sense to put a $250,000 engine in a $25,000 mom car.
I guess that aluminum is only about 85% state of the art for racing applications. For mom cars, yes, modern aluminum alloys are state of the art. Right now, the very best, most modern engines used in the very best and newest car in the class have aluminum engines. Some day, the state of the art in $25K mom cars will be more exotic than plain old aluminum, but not for a good while. The light weight, power output, and durability for the price is going to be hard to beat for a long time.
We shoudn't confuse the THEN state of the art silicon-impregnated aluminum used in the Vega with modern alloys and casting techniques. The state of the art has advanced tremendously since the Vega.
Finally, someone that understands that weight is a key to vehicle performance and economy! In the end, performance is all about power-to-weight ratio. Man against gravity and friction. Increasing power is risky with $60.00 oil. Maybe the time is right to try "unconventional" materials.
I suppose all the manufacturers are afraid to pioneer with plastics as main engine parts. It's totally understandable.
Comments
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=109438
Rocky
I agree that it can be a slight pain depending on what your storage options are and if you do the swap yourself. The difference between dedicated "snow" and all season can be dramatic even on AWD cars. I have a AWD 3 series and I think snows are worth the extra hassle.
I don't know if traction control has made snow tires obsolete. Do snow tires even come in the new sizes these days? I haven't bought a set since 1989.
I think people will always buy dedicated snow tires, especially since they have really advanced in the last few years. They come in about any size you can think of. I've seen some 911's with snow tires this year. They are even doing run flats now too.
We gave up on owning an "American" car long time ago - tired of being their R&D guinepig. When you consider the reliability, quality, styling, re-sell value, I don't see the Big Three has anything to offer in the mid range family sedan arena. What Detroit has to offer may be their latest effort on re-styled muslecars, which should capture some market shares in the coming years.
What happened with the Fusion? Did they intentionally decontent it in design and safety features because it was the low-end and these customers don't deserve worldclass engineering? Or is the Fusion/Milan just replacing the Taurus/Sable as rental fodder?
Either way it's a horrible mistake. Not putting their best engine in the 500 from the very beginning ( see Avalon 3.5L ) put a knife in that vehicle's heart. Why? Then this with the Fusion/Milan.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=109336
The trend is not only unmistakeable but it's beginning to look like a stampede.
The program, announced as a tentative agreement by the EPA and several groups, would recover and recycle the pellet-sized switches before the vehicles are shredded and crushed for recycling. Mercury switches have been used in antilock brakes and in convenience lights in trunks and under the hoods of vehicles built as late as the 2002 model year.
It would build upon programs used by some states and try to prevent mercury from being released into the environment when the vehicles are crushed and shredded. Collection programs are currently used in Arkansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Coal-burning power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States, according to the EPA. The mercury switches, which automakers began phasing out of their vehicles in the mid-1990s, are the nation's largest manufacturing source of toxic mercury.
Date posted: 03-09-2006
BAODING, China — Great Wall, one of the biggest private pickup and SUV manufacturers in China, bagged an order for 660 pickup trucks to be exported to Cuba.
The first batch was recently sent, and along with them went a unique gift: a one-off stretch-limo SUV.
The 264.5-inch stretched vehicle is based on the Hover, an SUV developed and produced in-house by Great Wall. According to a Chinese media report, the limo has a highly luxurious interior with leather trim, LCD TV, a stereo system with DVD and MP3 players, touch screens, and a nicely equipped bar with a refrigerator.
Its powerplant may be the only modest part of this vehicle: a 2.4-liter, 125-hp four-cylinder gasoline engine supplied by Shenyang-Mitsubishi.
What this means to you: Castro should enjoy this little perk since he couldn't exactly ride around in a Lincoln or a Hummer.
Rocky :P
They can get high horsepower numbers by adding turbocharging and I find it personally weird this hasn't became more popular trend and a way to save the consumer a buck at the pump. He/She doesn't have to give up performance either
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
Rocky
Vega = Chevy 1971-76
Falcon = Ford US 1960-1970
Fairmont = Ford 1978-1982? Was replaced in 1983 with the small LTD - basically the same car with a sloping nose.
There was a 1970 1/2 Falcon based on the low-end Ford midsize platform.
There still is a Ford Falcon in Australia
This wouldn't be the only time that a car would get passed off as being more than one size class. The 1976-80 Aspen/Volare was considered a compact, while the 1977-79 LeBaron/Diplomat were considered "upscale compacts", basically kind of like what the '75-80 Granada had been to the Maverick. Then for 1980-81 the LeBaron/Diplomat were considered "midsize", although they were the same size inside. The coupes were actually smaller, because in '80-81 they put them on a shorter wheelbase. Then for 1982-89, they tried to pass these things off as "full-sized" cars.
To be fair though, as compacts they were bigger, both inside and out, than any other compact of the time, and roomier inside than many pre-downsized midsizers. And as intermediates, they were about on par with GM's downsized intermediates. Not quite as wide inside, but more legroom, headroom, less wheel well, driveshaft, and transmission hump intrusion, etc. And as full-sized cars, well they didn't weigh much less than a downsized Caprice or Crown Vic, and really weren't THAT much shorter. And had comparable legroom and actually better headroom!
Rocky
Don't EVEN get andre started on the Mopars..... :P
Yep, and a spiffy ride it is. Ford offers nothing even close to it here.
http://www.ford.com.au/range/falcon/models/
Americans like and (ahem!) need larger cars. Larger=heavier. Heavier cars need horsepower and torque to pull them. You can get lots of HP from a turbo-charged 4 cylinder, but you would have to gear the car low and run the engine at high RPM to compensate for the lack of torque in a small displacement engine. When you run any engine at high RPM, gas consumption skyrockets. Bottom line is, there's no free lunch.
You can also think of it like this: It takes a certain amount of gasoline to pull a certain amount of weight. Heavy cars are always going to need a lot of fuel to motivate them.
If you are willing to accept really poor performance, you can get pretty good mileage from a small engine on a heavy car. However, most people can't tolerate their car having dog-slow acceleraiton.
The best solution? Lose weight! Even a Hummer-sized vehicle could get 25mpg if it were light enough. But, lightness is way more expensive than fuel right now!
I think it is due to a combination of factors.
1. Maybe a lot of Americans think the current prices are just a temporary thing and that prices will drop back below to the $1.50-1.75 a gallon range.
2. General affluence - a lot of people can afford to pay the current prices. Or, they are paying the current prices instead of doing something else with the money like putting it in savings. The natioanl savings rate was negative last year, meaning people spent more money than they made. I think the last time the savings rate was negative was during the Depression.
3. I don't think the Big 2.5 want people buying smaller cars (where you are more likely to find 4 cylinder engines). "Small cars small profits, big cars big profits." GM pushed SUVs awfully hard during the Olympics. There was a reason for that.
We had the (mis)fortune of seeing the very worst that the US car industry could construct. And, for me at least, growing up in the southern mid-west and being of modest means, what was available to us was the dregs. No '69 Chevelles for us. We rode around town in old Grands Prix, Ford XL's and LTD's (the big'uns from the seventies), Granada's (Grenade - a), Fairmonts, and the occasional clapped out Thunderbird or Cougar. The occasional weird friend would have an early CVCC (the civic, before it was officially a civic). We were brought up to understand that American cars built before 1973 were "it". Everything else was slow, knocked and pinged, and would only get worse in the future. We had no way of knowing that horsepower would ever come back. I had two friends whose fathers were crazy or just really cool, and allowed them to have actual musclecars. An old 351 XR7 Cougar and a 66 Goat. Even though they were relatively stock, they would blow by the rest of us like we were sitting still. The days of good cars were long gone, so we thought.
Not to be too pointy... actually the majority of the US is driving 4c autos, Rocky. As I know you are closely involved with the Big 2.5 I can understand why you might not see this trend but the following stats should be enlightening.
Round numbers:
#1 Camry 450,000 sales ( 400,000 in 4c )
#2 Accord 420,000 sales ( 375,000 in 4c )
#3 Corolla 375,000 sales ( 100% as 4c )
#4 Civic 360,000 sales .. ( 100% as 4c )
#5 Altima 300,000 sales ( 250,000 in 4c )
Of the top 5 selling autos in the US nearly all are 4c with HP ranging from 130 - 175.
Then factor in , Sonata's, Focus', Sentra's, Elantra's and others and the numbers are way up in favor of 4c over 6c.
This is what this tells me.
A) Detroit has swung and missed on understanding what the US market wants since it keep trying to sell V6's to a 4c buying market. or..
The trucks and SUV's may be highly inefficient, but the passenger cars that many of us buy tend to be 4-cylinder cars, despite the horsepower wars and the hype.
Here are a few theories why the Big 2.5 haven't cared much about this market in the US:
-Margins aren't high enough for their tastes or to make these cars interesting. (They seem to sell what they do sell just to meet CAFE standards.) That these cars are good gateway cars to a younger audience, or that the transplants can sell such cars with perfectly reasonable margins, seem not to resonate with management.
-Their legacy technologies mostly comprise older pushrods that they've opted to refine. Rather than invest in building an excellent four-cylinder motor, they have focused their efforts on either improving older technology (GM 3800 and 5.7 liter/350) or making a better V8 (Ford's very good 4.6 liter). Again, they go for the margins per unit, rather than devote much energy to building an excellent 4-cylinder that will find its way only into econoboxes and cheaper family cars.
-The compact car segment is highly competitive, less so than the truck markets. They have devoted their energies to the truck segment, where they stand a better chance of making more money, and are not really trying to beat the transplants in the retail subcompact or compact segments in which the transplants dominate.
Very much the strategy of a beancounter looking at margin, rather than a long-term manager with a view toward building market share. When times were good, a strategy to compete in the lower end of the car market would have simply reduced profits, which would have made no friends on Wall Street. But now that fuel prices and tastes are shifting, that shortsightedness is catching up with them.
I do think a 4 Cylinder Northstar could be a popular engine. Add a Turbo and mid 200's in horsepower would be realistic. I know GM is trying to compensate with DOD in their V-8's. However that option is only available on upper trim levels and puts it out of reach with the camcord.
Honda's proven with their new turbo 4 cylinder that you don't have to sacrifice power to get good gas mileage in the RDX. I do think this engine choice will help honda make the RDX a popular ute in the world of rising gas prices.
However the new Buick Enclave should get respectable fuel economy, especially if and when it get's a hybrid. I'm not going to guess if the RDX and Enclave will be direct competitors because the RDX is a sport ute and the Enclave is a little softer and will be more of a luxury ute. I will say this....They both are good lookin' midsize SUV's that will serve their customers very well. If I was a buyer of either one I'd be happy. BTW- My wife and I got into it over the RDX. She thinks it's ugly but did like the front end and interior. The rear end turned her off and I told her I liked the whole vehicle alot. :P To Her !
-Anyways keep up to good posts ya'll :shades:
Rocky
P.S. I was a little dissapointed the Acura RDX didn't get the 6-speed manuel option
What seems misunderstood in some places is that the American buying public in general is in no way interested in ubber-horse power or performance. Adequate is acceptable. All modern 4c have adequate power now.
Very point on about not wanting to drop $2K on V6 power not needed in daily driving.
Yes, it could be a good engine, but only for small, light cars. It still wouldn't perform well on a car that weighed much more than 3500 pounds.
That's basically what the 260 hp direct-injection turbo Ecotec 2.0 going in the Solstice is, except the Ecotec's an iron-block.
Well, this is true for small cars weighing less than 3500 pounds. A Big 3 land yacht typically weighs well over 4000 pounds.
Yes, just "adequate" is acceptable, but a 4 cylinder can't even pull a 2 ton+ car even adequately to most tastes. You would have to hop it up and gear it down, then you get worse gas mileage than a V8.
This demographic is so much different than in the past when one vehicle was all that a family had and it had to carry everyone.
The big land yachts are mostly for older folks as has always been the case.
Rocky
-juice
-juice
Keep in mind that many companies will build the same engine with various materials depending on the application, sometimes even mixing (Iron block, aluminum heads). Dodges V-10 is aluminum in the Viper, cast iron the the Ram.
Also, it was the "state of the art" OHC, aluminum engine that destroyed the Vega's reputation. The optional (and dated even at that time) "iron duke" was probably one of GM's most reliable engines. The Vega engine was later recast in iron, solving many (but not all) of its reliability issues.
State of the art materials in this day and age would be ceramics, carbon fiber and to a lesser degree, titanium. I'm not seeing alot of these materials on Asian cars these days.
We are discussing the bread and butter models. Camry Malibu, Accord, Civic, Cobalt, even 300C. I don't think you are gonna see much carbon fiber or titanium in these cars.
For racing, or for plush little Mom Car's?
For racing, no, Aluminum is not exactly state of the art. However, it wouldn't make much sense to put a $250,000 engine in a $25,000 mom car.
I guess that aluminum is only about 85% state of the art for racing applications. For mom cars, yes, modern aluminum alloys are state of the art. Right now, the very best, most modern engines used in the very best and newest car in the class have aluminum engines.
Some day, the state of the art in $25K mom cars will be more exotic than plain old aluminum, but not for a good while. The light weight, power output, and durability for the price is going to be hard to beat for a long time.
We shoudn't confuse the THEN state of the art silicon-impregnated aluminum used in the Vega with modern alloys and casting techniques. The state of the art has advanced tremendously since the Vega.
Light weight and heat dispersal are the advantages of aluminum over iron, cost and duribility are the downsides.
As far as OHV, you would have a hard time convincing me SOHC has any advantage.
Add 200 extra pounds of iron to the nose of an already pudgy FWD car of 3200 lbs, and it's usually a problem.
Until titanium, ceramics etc. replace it in the far future, aluminum is the best compromise.
I suppose all the manufacturers are afraid to pioneer with plastics as main engine parts. It's totally understandable.