Re: Understanding Americans better than Detroit does

I wish I had such a car to drive. A '69 Roadrunner with a 383, or better yet a 440, would be fine.

I can assure that there's less stuff to break on a Mustang than about anything. Toyotas success is not simplicity or lack of features. That's not the point of non-styling. It's important to people who don't like cars to be anonymous in their cars. The "best selling" car in the US over the last

20 years has been something very bland in terms of styling. That "don't-notice-my-car" demographic is very LARGE. Many people. You figure most of the humans on this planet are women, for one thing. They don't want to be noticed on the road at all, and the Toyota gets it done.

That would be funny if they geared their advertising in that direction. "Buy our car because it is so boring, no-one would dare hi-jack it!"

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Its easy to throw out random numbers. How about some meaningful ones? And very convenient of you to completely ignore the pollution associated with replacing a car with a new one, eh?

You have NO right to "get XXX off the road" when "XXX" belongs to anyone but you.

That figure has been published many times, it's well known. Yes purchasing new, particularly excessively large cars plus not maintaining them, can add to pollution. That's another issue.

Anyone who pollutes our air unnecessarily is subject to everyones comments. Being practical there is no point in running a 60s car when much better and cleaner running 90s cars can be purchased for a very low price.

Why stop at cars? ...

As a for instance, I'm sure newer homes are much better insulated and have much more efficient HVAC systems too.

Depending on how you scope this problem, both sides can make very meaningful arguments on why they are right and how their thinking results in minimal ecological impact. All you have to do is drive down the street on garbage day or past a landfill to see how wasteful we as a society have become.

Bob

I have a perfectly restored 1940 Chrysler Royal that I drive and YOU will not take it out of my cold, dead hands!

Good point. Let's tear down all homes older than 20 years and build new ones, and never mind how much it costs in money or pollution to build the replacements.

And therefore is true? A lie repeated often enough...

Now you're pretending to be dumb. He was of course meaning the cost to the environment of building a new car - period. But you knew that.

Yep - that's free speech. And you should expect to hear comments back - not necessarily favorable, eh?

As long as you don't legislate out of existence his right to run it due to your baseless opinion that there's no point in doing so. As someone pointed out in another post, are you going to browbeat people for living in old houses when they don't just tear them down and build a new one whether they can or cannot afford it? You have no sense of scale.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Here's the best piece of work on this I've seen. Very ingenious work by the University of Denver (Don Steadman and maybe others I don't know). I won't bore you with the details of how the detector works, but it's very very clever.

Also, I'll assume you won't read it, and I'll tell you what it says. There's no big jump in emissions as a car gets older. For the first 4 years, a car has practically no emissions compared to everything else. After that, there's a gradual increase, and MAYBE it flattens out at the top for cars old enough to have totally dead (or no) catalysts. There's not that much data on really old cars, so don't quote me on that. It appears, for instance, that CO goes from around 0.1% on a brand new car up to just under 2% on the oldest cars in the study.

22,000 measurements in this study, and they compared data from 3 different years, so the cars got 2 years older during the space of the study. They went back into the archives and charted the change in emissions by model year over 6 years (it's Table 6 in the appendix).

Sorry to spoil the fun with actual facts, but it's just such a great piece of research, I thought you'd enjoy it if you actually take the time to read it.

Lets be practical, but IMO all new homes should have been built to advanced specs many years ago. Older houses can be improved significantly by simply adding ceiling insulation and blowing in wall insulation if the house is so old it doesn't have same. A well insulated house is much more comfortable and quiet to live in.

My current house I built in 1988; it has 6" foam insulated walls, 20" ceiling insulation and an HRV. The heating energy used is about 35% of a typical new house built today. Most builders are still not building energy efficient houses and they won't until forced to by the code. In colder climates than ours the heating energy savings could be much higher. This house also stays cool enough on very hot summer days that air conditioning is not needed.

Oh really? So, do you ride a bike for all your under ten mile trips? Do you use a bus for the others? Do you shower in lukewarm water with an egg timer? Do you only eat grains and other foods that are most efficient, rather than meat? How well insulated is your house? Until you've got the right answers to all (let me repeat that: *all*) these questions, you really don't have any right to complain about somebody else's choices.

Unless, of course, you simply prefer the look and feel of the older car you've already got.

That's why I'm continuing my discussion of this matter, even though some here don't like it discussed. Free speech is my mode.

Where I live an annual vehicle air pollution test makes it impractical to continue running the oldies on a regular basis.

I will read it. Glanced thru it, and so far don't see any evidence of the 20000% worse pollutants coming off the older cars that's been claimed.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Just Facts wrote: >>Its easy to throw out random numbers. How about some meaningful ones? >>> And very convenient of you to completely ignore the pollution associated >> with replacing a car with a new one, eh?

That figure has been REPEATED many times, but its never been correct or meaningful.

Yes, I could buy a used car similar to the one my wife drives. But my '66 has ower maintenance cost, no cost whatsoever to purchase it, lower insurance cost, looks better, is in far better condition overall than any used 90s car, and its more fun to drive. Simple decision for me- I'm keeping the '66.

No it doesn't, I don't care WHERE you live. All it takes is proper maintenance and repair. My car passes its annual test quite nicely. Of course you never ASKED about that, you just ASSumed that any 1966 car is a pile of junk that should be gotten rid of.

A comment if I may on this subject. First, my knowledge of cars is pretty much nil, and I've never owned one. I will rent one once in a while, but I'm mainly a public transportation guy. Not because I'm against them, but because the affordable cars that are being built today bore the living crap out of me, and I would not see myself in one. So your comment about cars that stopped being objects of lust is pretty much dead on for me. Show me a 50's up to early 70's car, and goddamn these beauties had personnality. But now? Same profile, same headlights, a bean counter dressed in brown dream come true.

And then I saw the new Mustang, and the Dodge Challenger concept, officially greenlighted for production. Unless they price it totally out of my budget, the Challenger is going to be my very first car. Why? Because that lust you were talking about? No need to add anything else :)

You bastard!! :)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')