This is the end...

So the predictions of the death of the modern musclecar has started.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317556,00.html

I don't think performance cars are going to disappear, but I do think they are going to evolve into something that I will not like in the least.

I think ultra performance cars will persevere - they are too low volume to worry about. But the everyday performance cars may have to change over time.

Once I see all mid/full SUVs die then I'll be worried. CTS which is the heavier than a Camaro and uses the same V6 engine gets 18/26 from its 3.6L. The 436HP Corvette is rated at 16/26. Toyota 4runner gets 14/17mpg. What one do you think will die first.

I saw that blip on my local news this morning.

The question is would we buy a smaller/lighter Corvette or Camaro if it was powered by a smaller more efficent engine?

In other words, would you consider a Corvette or Z28 powered by a V6 turbo-diesel? Or should we simply kill off the current models and start over fresh?

I saw that blip on my local news this morning.

The question is would we buy a smaller/lighter Corvette or Camaro if it was powered by a smaller more efficent engine?

In other words, would you consider a Corvette or Z28 powered by a V6 turbo-diesel? Or should we simply kill off the current models and start over fresh?


Everytime that question is asked around here it turns into a 3-4 page wine fest with everyone, basically, complianing it's not the 'good 'ol days' or it the death of America of something else along that worn out ideology.

What has historically been the character of cars like the Corvette and Camaro? Handling numbers combined with a nimble feeling in a sexy package. That doesn't mandate a V8 anymore.

I'll admit I would miss the roar of a V8 at WOT but I'm concerned with the whole package (I actually drive my cars, not park them and talk abut driving). Initially it may seem counter intuitive, but I realy think car will be become MORE fun with LESS horsepower. The weight cycle would be ale to reverse itself to positive returns, and I can't see why the LSX technonogy couldn't be put into a world class hi-po V6 or even small displacement V8, say in the 4.5L range.

The world's evolving. The future generation of hot rodders or speed freaks are going to be electrical engineers and computer savy enthusiasts. You have to accept that, or fade noisily into obscurity.

Gasoline isn't going to be around forever. Someday we are going to have an electric Corvette and/or Camaro.

I'd rather have a Corvette with the Tesla setup than no Corvette at all.

If anyone has chance to watch "Future Car: The Fuel" I recommend doing so. It's very informative on the diverging technologies out there. As Z28x said, gasoline is going the way of the dodo and we need to find alternatives. There will need to be more than one answer to the problem.

Its foxnews.../thread

Gasoline isn't going to be around forever. Someday we are going to have an electric Corvette and/or Camaro.

I'd rather have a Corvette with the Tesla setup than no Corvette at all.

Hope I am dead by then...

Hope I am dead by then...Plan on dying within the next decade? :D

I'll stick to two wheels ;)

No matter what happens they can't stop me from driving my 5th Gen Camaro until I can't drive anymore.

Plan on dying within the next decade? :D

I don't think we'll see an electric Vette within the next decade...

Its foxnews.../thread

My thoughts Exactly
:rolleyes:

I agree.

Now if it were CNN....whoooaaaa....then it would be reliable, pertinent news! Unbiased, no agenda, on my side, yada yada yada.

Yup. CNN. That's the ticket. Or perhaps MSNBC.

I know they're all bad, in one respect or another. I just don't like FOx the most. O'Reily does his job. He pisses me off to no end.

Anyways, what I was implying, was if GM had released a statement saying doom-and-gloom stuff...which they are, btw. then I'd be worried a little.
So consider me worried a little.

I'm not. I survived the first go around. I'll survive this one.

What has historically been the character of cars like the Corvette and Camaro? Handling numbers combined with a nimble feeling in a sexy package. That doesn't mandate a V8 anymore.

cylinders = prestige and plays really well into the ideaology that more = bigger & better.

I dont see V8s dying off anymore than I see a rotary motor replacing all recipocating motors. Besides adding more cylinders for a given displacment has benefits. I'd take a 4.0 V8 over a 4.0 V6 any day.

I'm not. I survived the first go around. I'll survive this one.

Just out of curiousity - do you see the current run-up in fuel prices being driven by similar factors as the run-up in the 70s, or is something fundamentally different this time? I've got my own opinions on this, but I respect yours and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Shew....your standards are pretty damn low! :D

I'm a long way from being anything related to an expert on the subject, but like most things, I do have an opinion if you're really interested. :)

There are some similarities to the 70's, but this time, there is no embargo, there is little "holding back" of production, and there is a hell of a lot more growing economies that are hungry for energy. The politics are similar - even though we are now dealing much more with countries like Venezuela (who, like the Middle Eastern countries, only want our money but otherwise don't like us). Add the much more vocal environmental movement, and the relatively flat fuel economy standards over the last several years.

That said - we'll come through it. Will things change? Absolutely. Much like the "original" muscle car era changed - dramatically - this one will too. In the end, I think we'll be fine.

In the meantime....my 284 cid DOHC 4V 4.6 and G-Force dog-ring T5 should be just about built by now. I need to get hot on getting put back in and on the road. ;)

I'm a long way from being anything related to an expert on the subject, but like most things, I do have an opinion if you're really interested. :)


See, that's what I love about you - it doesn't take much arm-twisting to get your views on a particular topic.


There are some similarities to the 70's, but this time, there is no embargo, there is little "holding back" of production, and there is a hell of a lot more growing economies that are hungry for energy. The politics are similar - even though we are now dealing much more with countries like Venezuela (who, like the Middle Eastern countries, only want our money but otherwise don't like us). Add the much more vocal environmental movement, and the relatively flat fuel economy standards over the last several years.


OK, so I think you're looking at this the way I am in terms of what's driving the increased prices. The things you listed above don't seem to be fixed as easily as winning a bitching contest with a cartel. I mean, OPEC might be a group of SOBs, but they're still dealt with more easily than issues like petrogeology and the explosive growth in what used to be the third world.

My concern is that before, we primarily needed a political solution to loosen up supplies and get prices back down to an "acceptable" level. Nowadays, I don't think that we'll be able to get more oil - from what I've read, the world simply can't pump enough to keep up with the growing demand coming from every corner of the earth. Go ahead and tap into ANWR or engage in all the deep-ocean drilling that you want, and we still won't be able to increase production at the required rate. That kinda scares me.


That said - we'll come through it. Will things change? Absolutely. Much like the "original" muscle car era changed - dramatically - this one will too. In the end, I think we'll be fine.


I, too, think that we can get through this, and as long as we've got some wheels powered by an energy conversion device, people will figure out how to go faster. I'm just not sure that it's going to happen fast enough - and phasing in relatively modest increases in mandated fuel economy over the span of more than a decade probably won't solve any problems in the near-term.

If indeed the world's oil supply rate is currently near its max, and if indeed we start seeing huge gaps between supply and demand over the next 7-8 years, then the new CAFE legislation won't do a damn bit of good.


In the meantime....my 284 cid DOHC 4V 4.6 and G-Force dog-ring T5 should be just about built by now. I need to get hot on getting put back in and on the road. ;)

Oh, great - that'll shoot up gas prices another 10 cents :)

What is needed is a different fuel, not higher MPG standards. We will never conserve our way out of this.

cylinders = prestige and plays really well into the ideaology that more = bigger & better.

I dont see V8s dying off anymore than I see a rotary motor replacing all recipocating motors. Besides adding more cylinders for a given displacment has benefits. I'd take a 4.0 V8 over a 4.0 V6 any day.


I've bever bought into either or those ideologies. A Ferrari Dino has as much, if not more, prestige than an L78 Stingray.

Better is better, period, and is defined by the era. When gas was $0.25 a gallon bigger was the bench mark. Now energy is in a bind, the rules have changed, and bigger just means bigger.

I agree that we are likely very close to reasonable, relatively cost-efficient capacity.

Something has to give....and it will, whether we like it or not.

Bob

We will never conserve our way out of this.

So you're saying that it takes a couple hundred horsepower and 3,500lbs of structure just to transport my skinny ass to work? At some point, our means of transportation just look silly.

At least the military is looking seriously at the problem - maybe that'll bring a paradigm shift in personal transportation.

as always performance will find it ways into the public..

So you're saying that it takes a couple hundred horsepower and 3,500lbs of structure just to transport my skinny ass to work? At some point, our means of transportation just look silly.


Somebody finally said it!


But on a side note, a fear of commercial vehicles (like 18-wheelers) and their smaller counter part (soccer mom SUVs) are what I see driving up car weights. Not much you can do about fixing that though.

So you're saying that it takes a couple hundred horsepower and 3,500lbs of structure just to transport my skinny ass to work? At some point, our means of transportation just look silly.

At least the military is looking seriously at the problem - maybe that'll bring a paradigm shift in personal transportation.

I think he means that regardless of fuel economy, oil is a finite resource (technically it is renewable but not nearly as fast as the rate in which we consume it) that is going to run out regardless. We need a different source of energy period.

Originally Posted by Eric Bryant:
So you're saying that it takes a couple hundred horsepower and 3,500lbs of structure just to transport my skinny ass to work?The delima comes b/c I have to also use that 3500 lb vehicle for every other facet of my life, hauling kids, groceries, travel, in all weather conditions with a reasonable amount of safety provisions...not to mention ever longer commutes to good paying jobs.
I'd take a 'Busa powered Smart car in a minute if an extra work car was in the budget...insurance included.

if we give in to letting them making us stop bidding in the world race for supercars....

all i can say is... "'dem dam libs"

What is needed is a different fuel, not higher MPG standards. We will never conserve our way out of this.

We'll get a different energy base through higher fuel prices. Not through conservation, or especially government spending. The government couldn't spend their way out of a paper bag, and yet people expect them to be able to spend ten billion dollars, and magically have an alternative to petroleum.

Not gonna happen.

Fuel breakthroughs will happen in the private sector, as fuel prices climb.

When there is money to be made.

Not before.

if we give in to letting them making us stop bidding in the world race for supercars....

all i can say is... "'dem dam libs"

Yeah, liberals are the ones causing the oil crisis...there's some brilliant analysis :rolleyes:

Anyway, technology will eventually shift away from gasoline IMO. Gasoline will likely be available for as long as its around, I think primarily for enthusiasts who have older vehicles like us. But I think we'll see a major shift in what powers normal, daily driven vehicles.

With that said however, all the car mags in the mid '70s predicted this would happen by the mid '80s, so who knows...we haven't run out of oil yet :rolleyes:

Fuel breakthroughs will happen in the private sector, as fuel prices climb.

When there is money to be made.

Not before.

That is a great point.

And I think the big oil companies know exactly what they are doing. Why would they want a solution found? They are making way too much money on oil right now.

It's a shame that the Gov't only seems to want to spend money on "proven" methods or theories.
All the "New" discoveries or breakthroughs seem to begin in the private sectors.

If I were a CEO of an oil company, it seems I'd being working hard on "New" fuels, cells or conversion units, as everyone is speculating that fossil fuel is going to peak or has peaked.

I know BP has commercial out about alternative fuel research, but not much from the larger ones.

Where's the self preservation of the oil companies future's?
What's after oil for them?

The "oil crisis" is being greatly overrated by environmental fear mongers.

Well, I'm not sure if this dude qualifies as an "environmental fear monger":

Talking a little bit about the supply challenge. This is a slide that's been prepared by International Energy Agency and it just shows if you take all of the oil production around the world today, say, 86 million barrels a day, the natural decline on average is about 8% a year.

So, if we're going to stay with 86 million barrels a day, we've got to be out there adding 6 or 7 million just to stay flat. So the question is, where is that all going to come from when you see Saudi, Arabia saying they're going to go to 12 million to 12.5 million and maybe up to 15 million barrels a day? How is this going to happen? It's not so important just what I think or say, but I know we've been saying for the better part of nearly 12 months. Personally, I don't think we're going to see --- for three reasons, I don't think we're going to see the supply go over 100 million barrels a day. The reason for that is, where is it all going to come from?


That's from ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva.

If demand continues to grow at this pace, global production will peak sooner, not later, for geological reasons.

The opinion of our geologists is we can go a bit beyond 100 million bpd, but not to 120 million.

The capacity of raising production is a real challenge ... if we stay with this type of production growth our impression is that peak production could be reached around 2020.

That's from Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of Total. Based on his French-sounding name, I bet that he eats granola for breakfast and hangs out with dirty hippies on the weekend.

In a way [Peak Oil] scarcely matters; what really matters is the gap between gap in production and demand. I don’t know whether there is going to be a peak in world oil production, whether it’s going to plateau and then slowly come down. It could well plateau within next 20 years and I guess I would be surprised if it hadn’t. The thing is that demand is almost certainly going to outstrip availability, for whatever reason, and that is what is going to cause us difficulties. We’re never going to run out of oil, it’s simply going to become too expensive to use as we traditionally have. And that may happen much sooner than we expect.

This quote is from Ernest Ronald Oxburgh. The way he uses his middle name suggests that he's a bit of a snob - maybe even a liberal blue-blood!

I have always been a big believer in the oil price going higher. I should have pursued acquisitions more aggressively than I did, because the supply situation is proving just as tight as I thought it would be….. we’re there or close to [peak]. Mexico, the North Sea and possibly Ghawar are all in decline. The truth is the world is producing 30 billion-plus barrels of oil a year and is finding less than 10 billion. This is the worry.

James W. Buckee, former CEO of Talisman Energy. Given the fact that this is a Canadian company, it's surely not reliable information.

To be perfectly honest, these quotes are indeed cherry-picked, and there exists no small number of quotes from other oil execs stating that there is no immediate problem (of course, that requires one to define "immediate"). But it's intellectual dishonest to suggest that the risk of an oil supply crutch is just a boogyman constructed by environmentalists. There's much about this issue that's not releated in any way to concerns over global warming; instead, a lot of this is just a matter of petrogeology and the fact that what we've consumed in 100 years took 100 millions years to create.

Ignore that at your own risk.

Eventually we're going to have to find a renewable fuel source for our vehicles. Gasoline is not going to be around forever.

The "oil crisis" is being greatly overrated by environmental fear mongers. When a douche like Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize after producing such a scientifically flawed piece of cinema like the "Inconvenient Truth," I'm just going to sit back and ride the wave of stupidity and try not to drown.


100% agreed.

Eventually we're going to have to find a renewable fuel source for our vehicles. Gasoline is not going to be around forever.

It's this sort of environmental fear-mongering that's going to prevent me from driving a 6,000lb vehicle so that my 180lb self feels "safe".

The more I think about this topic, the more I'm inclined to think that as long as the competition doesn't offer hi-po cars, then that's good reason why GM should stop building them!

Conversely, GM should keep offering performance as long as everyone else is doing it while meeting emission requirements.

PS How do blown engines meet emissions more easily than do NA engines? My understanding is that it's not as straight forward as that.

PS How do blown engines meet emissions more easily than do NA engines? My understanding is that it's not as straight forward as that.

Meeting modern emission requirements with any engine is not an easy task, and forced-induction engines tend to be more difficult to calibrate due to their additional degrees of freedom (every variable that's added will multiply the required calibration time and effort).

But who mentioned anything about emissions in this thread? Meeting emission requirements isn't a problem within the industry. Improving fuel economy, however, most certainly is a problem. Forced induction shows much promise here.

The more I think about this topic, the more I'm inclined to think that as long as the competition doesn't offer hi-po cars, then that's good reason why GM should stop building them!

Conversely, GM should keep offering performance as long as everyone else is doing it while meeting emission requirements.

So you're saying GM should just follow the crowd and do whatever they do? That's definitely not the way to get ahead in this game. GM (or any automaker) should offer performance cars as long as it makes a business sense, period. It doesn't matter what their competition does. If GM can offer, say, a Camaro Z28 that gets only 25 mpg, but makes enough money either to pay CAFE fines or subsidize enough economy cars to avoid fines, and still make a profit, then that is what they should do. Emission requirements are just a red herring because all cars must meet them; there's no just paying fines like there is if you don't meet CAFE.

Originally Posted by Gunny Highway
The "oil crisis" is being greatly overrated by environmental fear mongers. When a douche like Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize after producing such a scientifically flawed piece of cinema like the "Inconvenient Truth," I'm just going to sit back and ride the wave of stupidity and try not to drown.Yeah, all his talk about Global warming being our fault, yet he "flies" to Oslo and back to recieve the Nobel Prize...typical Gore :rolleyes:
It might have been more impressed if he just would've teleconferenced and had them ship it.

Congress is looking at new legislation for the real reason oil prices are spiking.....speculators looking for a quick buck. Talk of things such as limiting the amount one can buy and lengthening the amount of time one has to hold a contract are being discussed to curb the roughly 40% speculation fee that is currently in the price of a barrel of oil. Even with the market adequately supplied speculators continue to cause the raising of prices through fear mongering and any little reason to cause prices to rise.

Congress is looking at new legislation for the real reason oil prices are spiking.....speculators looking for a quick buck. Talk of things such as limiting the amount one can buy and lengthening the amount of time one has to hold a contract are being discussed to curb the roughly 40% speculation fee that is currently in the price of a barrel of oil. Even with the market adequately supplied speculators continue to cause the raising of prices through fear mongering and any little reason to cause prices to rise.

Yeah I saw that that hearing. It's a good explanation to a point, but doesn't negate the importance of this and other legislation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It's that dependence creating an environment in which specuators can thrive.

In general, I think it's important for Congress not to get smug (as they are so used to doing) and think, "Well we solved foriegn oil dependency." This CAFE legislation is important, but isn't really going to solve anything. Higher fuel efficiency really means people are going to drive more, negating most of the legislation's effects. We really need that multi-pronged effort to attact the fuel problem from all directions. I think the Volt is emblematic of the sort of strategy we need.

So you're saying GM should just follow the crowd and do whatever they do? That's definitely not the way to get ahead in this game. GM (or any automaker) should offer performance cars as long as it makes a business sense, period. It doesn't matter what their competition does. If GM can offer, say, a Camaro Z28 that gets only 25 mpg, but makes enough money either to pay CAFE fines or subsidize enough economy cars to avoid fines, and still make a profit, then that is what they should do. Emission requirements are just a red herring because all cars must meet them; there's no just paying fines like there is if you don't meet CAFE.

No. That's not what I'm saying. To reiterate, if the competition is able to offer performance then there is no excuse for GM not to... is what I'm saying.

I hope that the OHV V8s are good enough to continue to pass every tightening emissions regulations. The point someone here made is that 'we should expect more power adders, in future' or words to the effect, implying that it's easier to pass emission laws with boosted engines. I'm wondering if there is any truth to that 'assumption'.

So the global warming speculation is actually innuendo started by the oil companies? Sounds like an oxymoron?

We all know there is no reason why oil prices should be this high. None of the 'excuses' conjured up by the oil companies ever makes sense to me. It's really an insult to my intelligence to accept the crap they publish through the various news agencies.

I'm hoping people don't just accept reasons without questioning them first.

My point was, fossil fuels are a limited resource. Even if we used all the farm crops, and switch grass to create ethanol, not only would we not be able to produce enough to feed the growing number of vehicles on the roads, and even if we could, what would that do to the environment and greenhouse gases. We need to think outside the box. There was a time at the turn of the 20th century that electric cars outsold gasoline powered cars. While electric cars are one answer, I think we need to look at several answers including biodiesel, hydrogren, compressed air, heck maybe even methane. There's even a company developing ethanol out of recycled plastics and foam from the automotive industry. While most of these technologies are still a few years away from being fuel alternatives for daily drivers, the sooner we push the industry to look at change, the sooner we can cut our dependance on foreign oil.

Performance isn't dead... it just needs to grow up and move in alternative directions.