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I'm old enough to remember what cars were like both to drive and to maintain before the bulk of the air pollution controls went in and am still interested enoug

I'm old enough to remember what cars were like both to drive and to maintain before the bulk of the air pollution controls went in and am still interested enough to care about current cars. At the time there was a big (probably astro-turfed) outcry that the smog standards would ruin cars performance and driveability. Yet, we now live in an golden age of efficient reliable cars with excellent performance. Have you ever changed spark plugs? set the points gap? rebuilt a carburetor [0]? Had to use starting fluid on a cold day? let the car warm up for minutes before it could be driven? Cars back then were considered worn out at 100,000 miles, now that is the first major service interval. As for performance, most hot hatches and sports sedans will blow away the muscle cars from the 60s: 1969 Pontiac GTO Convertible Ram Air IV 0-60: 5.8 Quarter Mile: 14.5 mpg: 8-13 2013 Honda Accord Coupe EX-L (Manual) 0-60: 5.5 Quarter Mile: 13.8 mpg: 18-28 Serious fast modern cars are at levels that would have been unimaginable then. The same sort of foot dragging and complaining about over-regulation happened with safety features in cars. Cars then are deathtraps compared to modern cars. Every day people walk away unharmed from accidents that would have been 100% fatal in 1970. My point here is that despite the resistance at the time the air pollution and safety standards are the best thing that ever happened to cars and to the public and to the auto industry overall. [0] "carburetor" French colloquial, "don't fuck with it".

yostrovs 9y ago
Companies spent billions on adjusting to regulations while trying to improve performance. Perhaps we'd be all electric by now, or perhaps we would have cars that fly, considering the money spent on efficiency and pollution control instead. Do read Bastiat's "What is seen and what is not seen" essay on squandered potential.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  No. This is America. We'd all be wearing masks to filter out particulate matter in the air. Companies are beholden to stockholders and they would charge ever more for ever less if we let them. Regulations are a good thing in some instances. Especially when it keeps our air clean.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Tom Lehrer's satirical song Pollution from 1967 seems an appropriate reminder. Here's a version with images from the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCojBngA--s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCojBngA--s
- gumby 9y ago
  Those same efficiency gains, which include materials, weight, fuel consumption etc all improve the path to flying vehicles.
saas_co_de 9y ago
Technology improved over time but that had nothing to do with environmental regulations. If you want an even comparison pick a random European car and a random American car and see which one you would rather drive. The European car will likely be some <2 liter, maybe diesel, tiny box that is like a slightly improved Yugo, and the American car will be a luxury tank. Trying to force Americans to cut down to European standards of living through government mandates is not politically popular. As long as we have democracy it would probably be better to come up with some alternative policy approaches.
- davidgould 9y ago
  > Technology improved over time but that had nothing to do with environmental regulations. The Honda CVCC engine which was the foundation that allowed Honda to eat GM's lunch in the 70's and 80's was developed specifically as a response to the 1970 clean air act. Current 100,000 mile service intervals are required to meet California emissions regulations that require emissions related components work that long.
- justin66 9y ago
  More sensibly, pick a Japanese car, which will be the same or have a ton of parts similarity in the US and Europe. The continual improvement of those cars was aided by regulations and market conditions (it's not an accident that sales of Honda and Toyota first started to take off in the US in the late seventies) and by engineering and corporate culture (it's not an accident that they still make better cars today).
- gumby 9y ago
  > “Trying to force Americans to cut down to European standards of living...” Spoken by someone who has presumably not lived in both places. “Cut down” indeed!
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    Spoken by someone who has lived in both places. America is vastly more wealthy than any European country and the standard of living is higher at all levels of society. Europe is fine if you have lots of money but it would be hell to be lower class there. Personally I prefer to live in neither but if I had to choose I would take America any day.
PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
And yet there are examples of regulations making things worse (the previous post), so given that you are talking about a host of regulations and many technology changes in the last half century, it can be very well possible that there are regulations making things worse. Simply because all the regulations correlate with improved cars does not prove that they all caused the improvements.
- slgeorge 9y ago
  > Simply because all the regulations correlate with improved cars does not prove that they all caused the improvements. True, but the balance of evidence must be to demonstrate that making that change WILL cause an improvement. Otherwise, you're simply in a religious argument. So what evidence is there that reducing regulation on cars improves their environmental impact?
  - atomi 9y ago
    For some people the potential money they make justifies the change, the environment be damned. They'll bend over backwards to rationalize it with false equivalencies as either being benign or actually benevolent when in truth it is neither.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
    Generally I take the stance that every regulation (and every other law) should have to justify its existence, and that it failing to do so would justify its removal. Yes, that is effectively a religious/moral argument given that determining why a law should exist is a subjective issue.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      Lets try that with your car some time - remove the brakes today, make them 'justify their existence' every so often. I don't think this idea is more than an ivory-tower sophistry.
      - 9y ago
pandaman 9y ago
This is a post hoc argument and a weak one. E.g. fuel injection was not really invented because of regulations, it was used first in aviation engines in WW2 then in race cars[1] and then, eventually, in consumer cars. Like pretty much all performance improvements. On the other hand, CAFE regulations gave us such an awesome vehicle as SUV [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_300_SLR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_300_SLR 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20120310182737/http://www.tsc.berkeley.edu/newsletter/Summer05-SUVs/history.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120310182737/http://www.tsc.be...
- Maybestring 9y ago
  >This is a post hoc argument and a weak one. E.g. fuel injection was not really invented because of regulations. Of course not, the EPA does not set regulations that require the development of new technology. They benchmark existing technologies, and set the standards at a level that can be met by applying those at a greater rate. Now was fuel injection applied to production vehicles to meet regulations? It would have eventually become ubiquitous either way, but... well the closest thing we have to a control group is the off-road vehicle market. It is still in the process of making the transition to fuel injection.
derekp7 9y ago
Counter example -- A Ford Ranger was perfectly adequate for many individuals, got much better gas mileage than an F150, and was cheaper. It got pulled off the market because the regulation said that it needed even better gas mileage for its footprint. This pushed people over the less efficient F150. Same story with other manufactures -- remember the Chevy S10? It's not that the gas mileage couldn't have been brought up to the regulation standards, but that would have increased the price so much that it would no longer have been competitive against the F150.
- nate_meurer 9y ago
  This is a common talking point amongst the the anti-regulation crowd (not that I'm accusing you being in that group :), but it's not really true. The Ranger was killed in 2011 because its market was disappearing, due largely to the marketing success of the F-150. Jackie DiMarco, Ford's Chief Engineer for the F-150, said as much when confronted about it: "We're investing in F-Series because the small truck segment has steadily shrunk from almost 8 percent of total industry sales in 1994 to 1.9 percent of industry sales in 2012" [1] I agree that CAFE, as instituted, contains some perverse incentives, but that's an argument for more sensibly crafted regulation. It's not a good argument against regulation in general. 1 - https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/trucks/a8845/reddit-reminds-us-why-the-ford-ranger-is-no-more-15388686/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/trucks/a8845/reddit-re...
  - derekp7 9y ago
    But how much of that market shrinkage was due to the Ranger price being too high, when compared to the F150? Could it have still had a market if it was able to be built cheaper? That is, I though that was part DiMarco's argument, that the market would completely disappear due to the price needing to be almost as much as an F150. But then again, I haven't seen the actual statement(s), so I could be remembering this from one of the anti-regulation proponents. BTW, I definitely agree with your point that the regulations need tuning and flexibility. Having them inflexible is just like having zero-tolerance policies that ruin lives without taking into account circumstances.
TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
Yeah, exactly. There is zero incentive for car companies to innovate from an efficiency/emissions standard without the regulations. There is no good reason to roll these regulations back at all.

yostrovs 9y ago

Companies spent billions on adjusting to regulations while trying to improve performance. Perhaps we'd be all electric by now, or perhaps we would have cars that fly, considering the money spent on efficiency and pollution control instead. Do read Bastiat's "What is seen and what is not seen" essay on squandered potential.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
No. This is America. We'd all be wearing masks to filter out particulate matter in the air. Companies are beholden to stockholders and they would charge ever more for ever less if we let them. Regulations are a good thing in some instances. Especially when it keeps our air clean.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Tom Lehrer's satirical song Pollution from 1967 seems an appropriate reminder. Here's a version with images from the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCojBngA--s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCojBngA--s
gumby 9y ago
Those same efficiency gains, which include materials, weight, fuel consumption etc all improve the path to flying vehicles.

saas_co_de 9y ago

Technology improved over time but that had nothing to do with environmental regulations. If you want an even comparison pick a random European car and a random American car and see which one you would rather drive. The European car will likely be some <2 liter, maybe diesel, tiny box that is like a slightly improved Yugo, and the American car will be a luxury tank. Trying to force Americans to cut down to European standards of living through government mandates is not politically popular. As long as we have democracy it would probably be better to come up with some alternative policy approaches.

davidgould 9y ago
> Technology improved over time but that had nothing to do with environmental regulations. The Honda CVCC engine which was the foundation that allowed Honda to eat GM's lunch in the 70's and 80's was developed specifically as a response to the 1970 clean air act. Current 100,000 mile service intervals are required to meet California emissions regulations that require emissions related components work that long.
justin66 9y ago
More sensibly, pick a Japanese car, which will be the same or have a ton of parts similarity in the US and Europe. The continual improvement of those cars was aided by regulations and market conditions (it's not an accident that sales of Honda and Toyota first started to take off in the US in the late seventies) and by engineering and corporate culture (it's not an accident that they still make better cars today).
gumby 9y ago
> “Trying to force Americans to cut down to European standards of living...” Spoken by someone who has presumably not lived in both places. “Cut down” indeed!
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  Spoken by someone who has lived in both places. America is vastly more wealthy than any European country and the standard of living is higher at all levels of society. Europe is fine if you have lots of money but it would be hell to be lower class there. Personally I prefer to live in neither but if I had to choose I would take America any day.

PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago

And yet there are examples of regulations making things worse (the previous post), so given that you are talking about a host of regulations and many technology changes in the last half century, it can be very well possible that there are regulations making things worse. Simply because all the regulations correlate with improved cars does not prove that they all caused the improvements.

slgeorge 9y ago
> Simply because all the regulations correlate with improved cars does not prove that they all caused the improvements. True, but the balance of evidence must be to demonstrate that making that change WILL cause an improvement. Otherwise, you're simply in a religious argument. So what evidence is there that reducing regulation on cars improves their environmental impact?
- atomi 9y ago
  For some people the potential money they make justifies the change, the environment be damned. They'll bend over backwards to rationalize it with false equivalencies as either being benign or actually benevolent when in truth it is neither.
- PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
  Generally I take the stance that every regulation (and every other law) should have to justify its existence, and that it failing to do so would justify its removal. Yes, that is effectively a religious/moral argument given that determining why a law should exist is a subjective issue.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Lets try that with your car some time - remove the brakes today, make them 'justify their existence' every so often. I don't think this idea is more than an ivory-tower sophistry.
    - 9y ago

pandaman 9y ago

This is a post hoc argument and a weak one. E.g. fuel injection was not really invented because of regulations, it was used first in aviation engines in WW2 then in race cars[1] and then, eventually, in consumer cars. Like pretty much all performance improvements. On the other hand, CAFE regulations gave us such an awesome vehicle as SUV [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_300_SLR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_300_SLR 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20120310182737/http://www.tsc.berkeley.edu/newsletter/Summer05-SUVs/history.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120310182737/http://www.tsc.be...

Maybestring 9y ago
>This is a post hoc argument and a weak one. E.g. fuel injection was not really invented because of regulations. Of course not, the EPA does not set regulations that require the development of new technology. They benchmark existing technologies, and set the standards at a level that can be met by applying those at a greater rate. Now was fuel injection applied to production vehicles to meet regulations? It would have eventually become ubiquitous either way, but... well the closest thing we have to a control group is the off-road vehicle market. It is still in the process of making the transition to fuel injection.

derekp7 9y ago

Counter example -- A Ford Ranger was perfectly adequate for many individuals, got much better gas mileage than an F150, and was cheaper. It got pulled off the market because the regulation said that it needed even better gas mileage for its footprint. This pushed people over the less efficient F150. Same story with other manufactures -- remember the Chevy S10? It's not that the gas mileage couldn't have been brought up to the regulation standards, but that would have increased the price so much that it would no longer have been competitive against the F150.

nate_meurer 9y ago
This is a common talking point amongst the the anti-regulation crowd (not that I'm accusing you being in that group :), but it's not really true. The Ranger was killed in 2011 because its market was disappearing, due largely to the marketing success of the F-150. Jackie DiMarco, Ford's Chief Engineer for the F-150, said as much when confronted about it: "We're investing in F-Series because the small truck segment has steadily shrunk from almost 8 percent of total industry sales in 1994 to 1.9 percent of industry sales in 2012" [1] I agree that CAFE, as instituted, contains some perverse incentives, but that's an argument for more sensibly crafted regulation. It's not a good argument against regulation in general. 1 - https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/trucks/a8845/reddit-reminds-us-why-the-ford-ranger-is-no-more-15388686/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/trucks/a8845/reddit-re...
- derekp7 9y ago
  But how much of that market shrinkage was due to the Ranger price being too high, when compared to the F150? Could it have still had a market if it was able to be built cheaper? That is, I though that was part DiMarco's argument, that the market would completely disappear due to the price needing to be almost as much as an F150. But then again, I haven't seen the actual statement(s), so I could be remembering this from one of the anti-regulation proponents. BTW, I definitely agree with your point that the regulations need tuning and flexibility. Having them inflexible is just like having zero-tolerance policies that ruin lives without taking into account circumstances.

TYPE_FASTER 9y ago

Yeah, exactly. There is zero incentive for car companies to innovate from an efficiency/emissions standard without the regulations. There is no good reason to roll these regulations back at all.