Ok heres one for you.

Remember that in the seventies, you couldn't buy a car that got thirty miles to the gallon.

Prices are mostly a matter of what people are willing to pay. When gas prices jumped up to a buck a gallon in '73 and '79, people quit driving. Nowadays, I don't see people changing their driving habits, even with gas over three bucks a gallon. You can be sure that gas prices will have to get a lot higher before you really see people change their habits.

I bought a new Pontiac Lemans in '75 for $5800.
It had ac, cruise control, am/fm cassette,radial tires,400V8, 4barrel, automatic trans, electric windows,locks,and seat.

And it got 21 mile to the gallon if you kept your foot out of it.

Car same size and equipment today would be at least $26,000 and might get 28 mile to the gal.

woopee

Just out of High School and was making $5.00 an hour as a cook.

It took 1160 hours to pay for the car.

Are there any people just out of high school making $22 an hour to pay for that $26000 car.

Gary

A couple of years later I bought my own car, a full size Pontiac, and it was roughly same price as my earnings for the year. I have not seen my children experience the same. Yes, 10 years out of high school but not 2 years out.

Another interesting aspect, and I'm talking Imperial gallons, roughly 5 of your qts. My dad's 6 cylinder Chevy gave 26 mpg. Today I drive a 6 cylinder Buick LeSabre and get 26 mpg. If I remove the catalitic converter from the Buick, it will give me about 33 mpg. Of course the experts tell us these emission control items are important, and beneficial to the air we breath. No sure about that bunk, man and other species have adapted very well to harmful chemicals.

What man has and is not going to adapt very well to is lack of oxygen. I expect it takes the same amoung of oxygen to burn a gallon of gasoline as it did in 1957. I don't remember blue and yellow fog in 1957, thus the emissions are worse than ever, and we are using more oxygen per mile of driving. You want to see a scientest stammer, put that one to him.

A mid 70's 4wd pickup with a say stock truck type 350 in it and a 4 barrel and no emissions gets about 12 miles to the gallon, maybe as high as 15 if you are super gentle.

A current 4wd pickup with similar power as the 350 gets at least 20 mpg and maybe as good as 23 all while polluting about 10 times less.

Pollution isn't a made up thing, ask californians and removing a catylitic convertor off a modern car will not improve gas mileage unless it is clogged up near solid.

I hate trouble shooting old cars with broken emissions stuff too but it does a job. Drive behind someone with out a cat and you smell it immediately, that stuff ain't good for noone.

Now, about my Buick it was about no Catilitic converter then adding a new one from GM. In my opinion every damn modern day gasoline powered car you follow down the road today stinks like hell. It used to be the diesels were the stinking engines, not any more.

About CA and other large North American cities, I've been there and it's lack of OXYGEN not emissions doing you in. I have experienced noticable lack of oxygen 4 times in my life, once in a silo, once in a manure pit, once in Detroit rush hour and once in Toronto rush hour. Let me assure you, one never forgets the feeling. Truth is 99% of folks, experience it not realizing the cause.

Breathing CO2 or NOx will make you feel like you can't get air. NOx is what triggers ahsama (sp?) attack, the irritants get into those little sacks in your lungs.

Breathing CO long enough is different, it takes awhile as it saturates your blood so you can't carry oxygen.

CO2 will make your body breathe faster to get more air.

Unburned fuel is another irritant but I don't know what its effects are on people.

On a grand scale, soot, unburned fuel and NOx are what cause huge smog clouds to hang over areas and cause breathing problems.

Engines with high compression and no emissions controls produce lots of NOx. No way around it mechanically speaking without reducing the peak temps in the engine which reduces the power output so you may as well of had lower compression to start with.

We have made progress, we squeeze many percent more energy out of each drop of gas than we did back then with our engines all while reducing our emissions. Any losses in mileage are from the trend of uppowering cars.

Look at our 0-60 times in the last 50 years. Family sedans now have 240 hp engines and would knock the early supercars on their butts.

Another thing to consider is a typical car is now driven to 200k km with out issue, it may have what 3-4 major tunes up in that time? Rarely does the gas mileage change more than a few percent. My old carb'd no anything fancy truck can go from 28 mpg to 17 mpg between oil changes if the carb gets upset and the plugs get a bit fouled.