The thing I think is funny is how much horsepower has been gained in
the last 2 decades. We think of these cars from the 70's as being hot
rods, but nearly all of them have less horsepower than a Honda Accord
does now.
The 60's cars were hot, the 70's were not. Marketing was working
overtime (ala "The Marching Morons"?) to try to sell those pigs as
hot anyway. Go-fast stripes, etc. Pollution standards were asinine,
measured in ppm rather than parts-per-_mile_, so the 'solution' was
to stuff a big choked-to-death engine in there that probably emitted
as many or more nasties than a smaller, more efficient and powerful,
and perhaps slightly dirtier in ppm engine that would have certainly
wasted less gas, and thus, ipso facto, emitted less pollution. But
hey, at least that smog was pre-diluted with a lot of air! Saved
Brownian motion from having to do it in the atmosphere, there's a
'big win' for you.
It's amazing that _finally_ they've gotten back to the power levels
they once had, probably surpassing them, it only took them fifty years
or so. Of course, the new engines are a lot cleaner, longer-lasting,
and more reliable. But we're probably 20-30 years behind where we
would be if regulators weren't so f-ing stupid. And a lot of needless
petroleum burned along the way.
The next frontier, of course, is to figure out that a typical transport
appliance doesn't need more than about 150HP in order to be quite
driveable,
so the smaller more fuel-efficient engines should be coming along soon.
Hell, my 55HP 200D is _very_ driveable, it's the extra torque (and the
manny tranny) that make it so.
-- Jim
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