Z28x

It is 1978, CAFE standards are 18mpg and going to 27.5 in 1985, over a 50% increase in only 7 years. Is this the end of the line for V8's and performance cars? is everyone in the 90's going to be driving tiny little 3cyl. euro/japanese cars? Or will automakers design better cars that can get 400HP+ out of a V8 (double the power of a 1978 V8) all while dramatically improving fuel economy at the same time.

Things looked a lot worse back then, yet here we are with some of fastest and most affordable performance cars of all time. And GDI, HCCI, Cam-less heads have yet to go mainstream.

Z28Wilson

Remember how castrated those V8s were in the 70s and 80s? Certainly not the glory years of performance. Ok, so it might take the better part of two decades to get back to where we are now? That makes me feel better. And who's to say the standard won't increase again in 2016?

As I keep repeating, there is no quick and easy way to get today's V8, even as outstandingly efficient it is, anywhere close to the proposed standard with similar output in just a few years. These companies would be doing it already if it were possible. I keep hearing "don't worry about it" but at the same time hear little about how it will be realistically achieved.

Route66Wanderer

I think your logic or maybe your memory might be a little flawed.

I lived through those times (my first vehicle being a brand new 1973 Formula 400) and I watched in tears as the performance cars I lusted over became emasculated versions of themselves or disappeared altogether.

By 1980, I had stopped buying “cars” completely and started buying SUVs (they weren’t called that then) and didn’t return to the “car” end of things until the year 2000.

Yes, V8s have not only survived but have thrived and are far, far better (i.e. more powerful, more efficient and more dependable) than ever before but that didn’t happen anywhere by near 1985. Most of the performance strides that have happened and which have brought us to where we are today didn’t really gain steam until the mid 90’s or so when better engineering and more importantly, computer controls made the engines we currently enjoy possible.

We may see the same sort of thing happen this time as happened then but I wouldn’t assume that. Also, even if the survival of the V8 and/or the survival of real performance vehicles for the “average Joe” is possible while meeting the new mandates, whether such vehicles will be allowed will in large part be up to who (in DC) is in charge and who they are beholding to for their positions of power.

Z28x

We will probably hit a performance plateau. 400-450HP will be top of the line. No more 550HP Mustangs and Camaro's. Of course weight will drop (see the Alpha Thread) thus keeping the cars just as quick, but with better handling and fuel economy.

Honestly how fast of a car do you need? were does it end? Malibu's that can do high 12's? We already have factory 11 sec. Corvettes. Camaros in the 12's and Malibu V6 in the mid 14's. I mean do you really think we can keep going on were every few years a model gains 100HP and a 1/4 sec. in the 1/4mi.? Do you expect the 2016 Mustang Cobra to be 750HP, Camaro SS 550HP and a 400HP Malibu? The HP war has to end some time. I'd personally rather see the engineering effort go into making a 350HP 35mpg Mustang or Camaro instead of a 750HP top of the line ZL1 or Cobra (as cool as those cars would be I'd never probably own one)

Z28Wilson

....And now we've hit the crux of the issue. Now we're talking about someone somewhere putting some arbitrary, artificially produced cap on horsepower. Some person telling YOU how much of something YOU need. That is the whole point of this backlash.

You might say no one needs more than 400 HP, and that may or may not be true. Keep in mind you're an enthusiast. Some pencil-necked politician might decide "no one needs more than 250 HP", or whatever, and draw up efficiency standards to get that done. Who knows. Maybe I just need to put on my tin foil hat and "stay off the grid" as it were. But I am all about letting the market decide how powerful our cars get, and how many choices in that realm we get. And the price of fuel is the major determining factor in that equation, and it has all worked very well. Now we'll have some high, government-cooked efficiency standard that may (or may not, to be fair) effectively remove choices from the people regardless of market forces like the price of gasoline. You decide whether this is right or not, in a "free" society.

Z28x

No I was talking more from a market stand point. When is enough enough and the whole thing collapses in on its self. I'm talking about a HP bubble that will some day pop. I'm not talking about someone saying "though shall not have 400HP".

I think fuel prices will keep things in check, another reason I think CAFE is a non-issue. I'm not a supporter of CAFE, I just don't think it will bring dooms day and have us all riding bicycles in a few years.

indieaz

More people are becoming aware of how our addiction to fossil fuels is a long term problem for this country. I don't think CAFE is going ot kill these cars, I think market demand will. When gasoline returns to $5/gallon (and it will soon) the fresh reminder of our oil problem is going to drive innovation to fuel efficiency and away from trying to build a 100,000 mile warrantied 550hp monster machine.

CAFE increases might not even be necessary...gas prices in the next couple of years will probably be enough by themselves. When demand for muscle cars gets low enough, ti doesn't matter how badly enthusiasts want them, they simply won't be made if they don't make business sense.

My .02.

flowmotion

Completely aside from CAFE, V6s that are making 350HP+ are naturally going to make the V8 a far more niche product. If you don't have a huge volume of V8 pickup trucks being sold, the economics of a V8 engine don't favor "affordability". I just don't see the automakers continuing to invest billions and billions to sell a small number of non-premium cars.

Also, there's a fundamental difference between now and the 1970s in that the automakers are far more globally integrated. In the 70s they were stuck with de-tuning legacy engines and shrinking existing platforms. Now they have a whole bunch of technology sitting on the shelf that they can bring to market.

Z28Wilson

Keep in mind that in every barrel of oil, only a small fraction of it is turned into gasoline for automotive use. There are a LOT of other things we use oil for, many of which you would never even think about.

People cry about liberating ourselves from fossil fuels, but they only talk about it in relation to our vehicles. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

indieaz

Transportation is the vast majority of our oil use.



But yes, oil is used in making almost every other product. However, transportation affects prices of all products and all aspects of our economy. If a month from now tupperware tripled in price we could probably make do. Gasoline price run ups are more problematic.

guionM

I too lived through the 70s. I was fortunate enough to start getting into cars before I was even 10 years old. I also even back then, had a mental curiousity on automotive history. Here's what I remember.

First, Brand new 1973 Formula 400 Firebirds weren't that quick. They had twin hood scoops, they had turned aluminum dash inserts. But at 170 horsepower the Ford Mustang 351 would clean it's clock... badly. Even a "smog-choked" 1976 Volare Roadrunner would beat it sprinting to 60, bringing me to point two.

Second, the only performance that truly disappeared was the hairy firebreathing models. Just like many school kids today lust after a ZR1 Corvette, a Dodge Viper, the Shelby GT500, or even the Cadillac CTSv, Hemis, ZL1s, and Cobra Jets were cars that we saw in magazines, and perhaps knew a friend of a friend who's neighbor's boss at work had a friend who had one of those cars.

What survived was performance of base muscle cars that most people bought. Most Roadrunners were 383s or 400s. Throughout the 1970s, most performance cars matched the acceleration times of those base muscle cars.

Skipping over to facts:

First, the fact that performance car sales dropped from 1968 to 1969 before the bottom fell out in 1970. Those very same car buyers who bough muscle cars matured into something more luxurious. Hence the birth of the personal luxury coupe.

The Pontiac Grand Prix came out in 1962. But it wasn't until 1969 that sales exploded (from 32,000 in 1968 to 112,000 in 1969). Chevrolet's Monte Carlo also became a serious hit. All this took place at the same time you still had available high powered GTOs, Hemi powered Mopars, and SS models powerful enough to light a small city..... and whose sales became a fraction of what they historically were.

In 1970, insurence surcharges kicked in that all but wiped out whatever remaining young, under 25 year old buyers existed.

Chrysler decided to kill it's Hemi in the early 70s because it was always an extremely expensive engine to make.

Lead was banned from gasoline in the early 70s, killing high compression engines.

Opec decided to punish the US and Western Europe for supporting Isreal in the 1973 war, so they embargoed oil exports to the western world, and jacked up the prices. This wrecked the US economy, and clearly demonstrated that they could clearly put the United States security at risk. This (more than enviromental concerns) was the mother that created CAFE standards in 1975.

CAFE kicked in starting the 1978 model year for cars and 1979 for light duty trucks. It's jump off point was the 14 mpg average vehicles achieved in 1974, and it's 1st year goal was 18 mpg.

It mandated that cars improve their fuel economy nearly 100% from 1974 levels in 11 years.


As you see, there were a multitude of reasons performance and muscle cars died in the 1970s.

There was no government or enviromental conspiracy. There was no person sitting in the White House who decided to take time off from being concerned with the thousands of nuclear missles aimed at us, the wars going on in the middle east, the risk that westeren Europe was going to be overrun, inflation, and the multitude of other pressing national and international issues to decide to make it a priority to stamp out performance cars.


What killed high performance and muscle cars was far less glamourous, and far less sinister.

What killed muscle and performance cars?...


The market simply matured, and muscle car buyers bought something else.




Pontiac kept making 455SD engines till well into the emissions age, and kept the Trans Am (save the 1975 model) a pretty ripping performer.

The quickest accelerating non Shelby Mustang ever made before the 1999 Mustang GT was the 1973 351 HO Cleveland.

Outside of the too-rare-to-call-production ZL1 Camaro, the 1993 LT1 Camaros were the quickest accelerating Camaros ever made. Even the 1980s era 305HO Z28s were as quick as 389 GTOs...the ones that weren't "Royal Tuned" before being turned over to car mags... (about 7.5 seconds to 60 & 15.6 quarters).


Finally, there's the idea that it will take cars another 30 years to get this quick again.

Back in the 1970s, as pointed out, there were a huge number of things that killed high performance cars, mostly the market. Also, there was no pending technology or relatively cheap breakthroughs standing by. The best way to deal with emissions was to send exhausts through the engine again, & again till it burned enough emissions (EGR valves) and stick a box full of platinum beads (catalytic converter) and a remodeled A/C compressor pumping air into the system. To save fuel, shrink cars and go FWD. Cars as a whole didn't put out alot of horsepower anyway by today's standards, so there wasn't very far to fall before you had engines choked up.

Compare that to today.

Instead of doubling fuel economy in 11 years as we did with the original CAFE (imagine someone legislating that cars go from 30mpg average today to 60 mpg by 2020!), we're increasing car fuel economy by 33%... a far cry from 100.

Second, cars have essentially returned to 1970s era weight and size. Today's Camaro is just as wide and nearly as long as it was back in the 70s. Today's big cars are back at 2 tons. My Dad's Caprice Classic weighed 3800 pounds. Today, a loaded Malibu weighs nearly that much.

Third, there is a far greater horsepower cushion than back in the 70s. A 1968 383 Roadrunner did a 15 second quarter. A '68 GTO did it in 14.5. A 69 Z28 did it in about 14.7. The current Honda Accord coupe will at least a 14.5.... let alone any current Mustang GT, Dodge Challenger R/T, Camaro SS, or even a Cobalt or Impala SS! To even remotely think that performance is going to fall to "slow" levels of the 70s really isn't playing with a full deck.

And Finally, but by no means the least, there are still tons of tricks and items at our disposal that simply didn't exist back in the 1970s. There's direct injection, turbocharging, computer controled transmissions and engine management systems in each car that's more powerful than so-called supercomputers of the 1980s. There's still the old downsizing trick which will put us in cars a bit smaller and lighter, and even if engine sizes shrink, the smaller engines still churn out enough power so you won't notice any performance loss.


Today we have 2 ton Hemi coupes that put out more horsepower than old 427s and 440s getting better fuel economy than V6 engines found in imports producing a third less horsepower. We have the most powerful engine the General Motors Corperation ever made prior to the day the current Z06 went on the street... yet it's fuel economy is merely 1 mpg behind those same V6 engines. We even have 29 mpg V6 engines that produce more horsepower than any Z28 prior to 1998.... that includes the originals.


Point is plain that the ability to continue making high performance cars is unaffected.

However, like the 1970s, it's the PUBLIC that determines what is made, not some shadowy entity. If the public still demands certain types of cars, and it's enough to be profitable, then they will be made.


One last item you probably didn't know.

At the start of 1970s, there was a new performance war brewing.

The GTO had gotten too expensive, and the cheap Roadrunner and Chevelle SS were clearly dying at the hands of personal luxury coupes and high insurence.

Chevrolet's Nova SS350, Plymouth's Duster & Dodge's Demon 340s soon to be 360s, were joined late in the game by the 1974 Pontiac GTO. Chrysler was going to respond by moving the Roadrunner and R/T names to the new upcoming Volare and Aspen. Both were slated to have 4 barrel carbs. Both already had dual exhausts.

The oil embargo put a halt on everything.

The '74 GTOs didn't sell. Chrysler (trying to have emphasize economy as well)stuck a 2 barrel carb on top of their very potent 360, resulting in the improbable fact that a 2 barrel Roadrunner outran a 4 barrel Trans Am T/A 6.6 to 60 mpg until the 2 barrel ran out of breath. Novas became economy cars again.

If it wasn't for the oil embargo of late '73 to 1974, and the public flocking to economy cars and shunning anything related to performance (save, ironically, the Trans Am), the big muscle car wars of the 1960s would have become the compact performance wars of the 1970s.

And that's even with the new pollution standards of the time.

What we are seeing today is nothing compared to the 70s.

bossco

Agreed, big advances in effciency and pollution reduction seem to be getting hard to come by and what we are seeing now is a refinement in whats already out there. - err, to put it broadly.

Chuck!

I need cars that will run low 13s or high 12s with a warranty.

SSbaby

I agree with the OP.

We've been through repetitive cycles and oil price spikes followed by tough CAFE standards and ever toughening emission laws.

The V8 lives on and will get better with newer developments. I don't see the doom and gloom that some see and I certainly think it's premature to speculate the end of the V8 if history is your guide. Not unless we see the end of the internal combustion engine.

Trucks will always need V8s and while manufacturers continue to amortize their engine production across both cars and trucks, there will always be a demand for V8s in cars as well as it continues to be a relatively affordable option. Besides, I'm sure there'll be way more Camaros shifted if the V8 option was there as opposed to the N/A option.

Then there's the class warfare, why must V8 cars be the exclusive domain of the wealthy?

Z28x

It has nothing to do with V8's, it is the horse power. The masses will always have their ~300HP performance cars. 300HP V8's are all but dead in cars after the 2010 run of the Mustang. In the 90's you needed a V8 for 300HP+, Today it is V6 and turbo I4 territory. In a few years V8's will be for those wanting 400-500HP+ which has traditionally been the domain for those with a better paying job. When HP is upped, you need to add bigger brakes, transmission, etc.. and that cost money. You want a 500HP V8 car you are going to have to pay for it just like always.