It didn’t work last time – but this time is different.
Last time, the method deployed to get rid of cars – or at least, cars for us – was emissions standards. The plan was to lay down requirements so severe that cars couldn’t be made to comply with them.
It was a brilliant idea. Don’t tell them you’re anti-car, just anti-pollution. Don’t ban cars, just require them to be ever “cleaner.” Until you can’t build cars that are “clean” enough.
At first, the plan appeared to be working.
Muscle cars were the first to be gotten rid of. By 1975 – the first year for catalytic converters – there were no more muscle cars. Just a few cars that looked like muscle cars such as the gimping-along Pontiac Trans-Am, Chevy Camaro (no more Z28) and of course, the Corvette – which didn’t come with anything stronger than a 205 hp 5.7 liter V8.
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Engines were strangled into compliance. Literally. Dual exhaust disappeared. Exhaust piping got smaller. Airflow to carburetors was restricted in the manner of putting a pillow over the face of a sleeping victim and holding him down with it until his sleep became permanent. Carburetors went from four to two barrels and were adjusted to suck as little fuel as possible.
And the cars began to suck.
They were slow – and balky. Hard to start – and sometimes hard to stop. Gas engines would diesel – or continue to run, in a kind of Parkinsonian Pantomime of internal combustion – even with the ignition off.
Small and underpowered – on the way to nonexistent. This seemed to be the way things were headed.
But a miracle happened.
The engineers did something no less remarkable than what the rocket men of the ‘60s did when they went from strapping a tiny satellite on the nose of an ICBM in the ’50s to putting men on the Moon in the ’60s.
They not only complied with every exhaust emission standard laid down, they more than doubled the power/performance of the engines that were available. In some cases, they tripled it. A new Corvette’s V8 makes 495 horsepower – while emitting a fraction of the emissions of a 1975 Corvette’s 205 horsepower V8.
In fact, the new Corvette – and new cars generally – emit no emissions at all. In terms of the way emissions used to be defined, that is. Incompletely burned hydrocarbons, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulates and such. The hydrocarbons are now burned with such efficiency that there are essentially no emissions as they were once defined.
