Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me of what I forgot to add about why 90s cars were better. These days, when manufacturers not called Mazda build a performance car or even a reasonably quick car, they're usually "throwing nukes at Newton" rather than simplifying and adding lightness. Horsepower is up in a wide variety of market segments, but so is weight... in all market segments. The result is that, if you're trying to buy a new car in the US, you'll find lots of good highway bombers, maybe even some good track cars, but very few true driver's cars. It's like the Challenger Hellcat. I really want to like this car: it's good looking, it's got 700+ horsepower, it's got the tires and suspension and brakes it needs to work with that power, and it's a brazen kick in the teeth to people who think every car needs to be all boring and green and stuff. Unfortunately, it weighs over 4000 lbs and is full of stuff you don't need. With everything else it's the same story.
Most cars today have gained hundreds of pounds of curb weight compared to cars of the 90's even early 00's. Take the Civic Type R (Euro Spec) it might have 300hp but it weighs over 3,000lbs.
A direct quote from Kia Australia's Chief Operator: "For 40 years Ford and Holden have been doing the preliminary work saying that, ‘If you want to drive a ‘real’ car, it’s got to be a rear-wheel-drive car’. Well, okay, we’ve got one. Do you?" Well played Kia, well played.
Hate to say it but it looks like Ford and GM just got owned. And now GM's unloading its European operations, which were going to provide the replacements for their actually good Australian cars, so what are they going to do now? Sell them Chinese cars? This will end well. Also, I must say that the Kia Stinger is not a bad looking car, even if the rear does remind a bit of the Porsche Panamera. I hope they sell it here in the States instead of doing what Ford and GM did, teasing us with it for years and then getting rid of it.
Won't go dig quote, turbos putting inadequate engines? That's the point. And if anything makes them super engine. Try driving a ford fiesta 1.0 ecoboost. It'sa tiny 1 litre engine, so small actually that you can stand it up and it only covers the area of an A4 sheet of paper. Makes more power than my 1.8 zetec did and more torque across the entire rev range. And yet I've you're upto speed, you back off, turbo comes off boost and you get that low displacement economy again. Is it not the ideal situation. Cheaper to run. Cleaner. Lighter. Yet matches or exceeds performance
No turbo is perfect. Even the most advanced turbos, unless fitted with some kind of anti-lag system, will have at least a tiny delay between stepping on the gas and feeling the power. If Ford has managed to completely eliminate turbo lag, I'd like to know how because that's nothing short of groundbreaking. The other thing, though, is that turbocharging used to be something genuinely cool - something you only got on performance models. Usually, when there was a turbo engine in a car, there was a naturally aspirated version of that same engine going into lower-line models, and even that version was at least sort of adequate for the weight of the car (exceptions were usually in cars where nobody expected adequate power anyway). If you create a situation where everything is turbocharged just as a matter of course, then it's not special anymore. It's really hard to describe, but this still feels like a bad thing. Like it violates the natural order of things. I think in this situation, as in so many others, efficiency and the soul are at war. Turbos have gone from being the stuff of legends (911 Turbo, Supra Twin Turbo, Omni GLH-S, etc.) to being something utterly ordinary, and it just feels like it shouldn't be. Some of it is sound: sixes sound better than fours, and eights sound better than either, but both sixes and eights and being pushed out by turbocharged versions of the one below them. The 1.0 EcoBoost kind of breaks this, because threes sound better than fours too, but here there's a secondary issue - even if I'm not longer the displacement hawk I was at one point, one liter is still a bit small for me. That's what the base Geo Metro had in it. From that perspective, it still sort of works, as the EcoBoost has a heck of a lot more power than that thing ever dreamed of, but then when you think about it, that comes right back to my original point. More power should be the entire point of a turbocharger, not a secondary benefit. It shouldn't be "Let's give it a really tiny engine for fuel economy and then add a turbo so you can still have power when you need it." It should be "OK, we've got this engine that's kind of good enough, now let's make this sucker really go."
And to ad to this even, this isn't anything new even for American automakers. Even as far back as the early 80's American automakers were already starting discover turbos. Chrysler had the 224hp 2.2L Turbo III in 1991. DOHC, 16v, turbo engine with a head developed by Lotus. This made the Spirit R/T the fastest accelerating 4 door car on the US market in 1991-1992. The 1991 Ford Mustang made 225hp out of an engine over twice the size. The Spirit could keep up with the manual Mustang up to 110mph. They both topped out at 143mph. Can you imagine getting your brand new automatic 1991 Ford Mustang GT and being smoked by a STOCK 4-door economy car? Even Ford was doing this as early as the 1984 model year with the Mustang SVO. By 1986, the SVO was making 205hp out of Turbo 2.3L versus the 200hp out of the HO 5.0L Mustang GT
The current mx5 and original mx5 are almost the same weight. Equally the new one did a really good job on all of its crash tests and is a generally safe car. It is absolutely possible to make cars that are safe and lightweight. However in countries where most people drive massively heavy pickups lower weight vehicles do have a disadvantage. Also look to the Citroën cactus. Not the safest car in the world, "only" got 4 out of 5 stars in encap testing. But that thing is super light weight, cheap too, fuel economy is fantastic. I guess it is a crossover that I can get behind. Specs etc: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_C4_Cactus
Just a question what will happen now that opel and vauxhall is sold to PSA with holden will they get theyre own cars again?
Sadly the 2018 Commodore & Astra will be "Opel" built as scheduled, but once those generations end production, who knows.
would be nice if they would build some cars for australia again because i love utes and the old commodores
The new McLaren 720s looks absolutely incredible. I really hope to see other manufacturers take inspiration from it, if for no reason but getting more visibility back into car design rather than huge C pillars on everything.
I think it's about time to start getting the Crown vic fixed up and ready to sell. I've been trashing it for 8 months now, way longer than originally planned, and new problems are staring to surface. I've also managed to put a couple of nice dings in the hood and scuff the bumper covers up. I need to dump it on some schmuck and buy another. Damn if it hasn't treated me well though. I'll really miss it.
I have the same issue in the student car park at school, although the parking wasn't that shit, it is very consistently shit.
