You have no idea what you’re talking about. The original insight had arguably, if you take into account the tech available at the time, the most advanced IC engine ever made. What they achieved with thermal efficiency on that engine makes the Prius drivetrain look like kids stuff. Modern powertrain engineers still use…

Oh I’m not saying they didn’t fuck up, but it’s easy to look at things through a rose-tinted modern view. The realities of the time they were in make achieving modern levels of efficiency and cleanliness impossible. Designing a fuel efficient engine is a very, VERY difficult and complicated task that requires insane…

What you’re not seeing is that blaming “auto emissions” completely upon the car companies is completely stupid. Get the consumers to start buying smaller vehicles, get them to actually care about fuel economy, get them to start driving less. There’s only so much you can do to make a 5500 lb SUV efficient.

You have very nicely cherry picked information here.

Do you work in engine development in the auto industry? I do, and let me tell you, the engineers work HARD to make the engines as efficient as they can. This is not tinker toy bandaid engineering here, it’s NASA level stuff. Upper management has absolutely no idea how any of it works or what’s going on.

This revolution? What exactly will this revolution be using to keep you from freezing to death in winter? Everyone likes to pick on the auto industry, but ignores the fact the sales pitch to reign in CO2 from HVAC is at this point basically throw out your house and start over in a much, much more expensive manner, or…

I mean, there ARE simple answers, they just aren’t the answers anyone wants.
Beef up public transit systems by taxing cars more. That’s pretty simple and it makes driving alone in your 4000 pound truck-wagon prohibitively expensive. BUT, no one would agree to that because it’s inconvenient.

Yes. And the technology didn’t exist at the time to do both at the same time.

Except if we roll them back we will never know. Do you know what’s going on in the engineering departments at every automaker? Maybe they all have (or had at least) new engine programs in progress that were to be released in 5-10 years.

It is very, VERY misleading to act like the auto industry “did nothing” about emissions. The difference in vehicle emissions from 1979 to 1989 is astonishing, and the amount of money and time that was spent on R&D was incredible. Only someone ignorant would claim they “did nothing”.

My first thought from the gif on the home page: must be a truck that belonged to a drug smuggler or coyote.

What’s louder? The VTEC intake honk or the Honda reverse gear whine?

I worked at Chrysler from 2011-2014 and everyone I talked to who was working there prior to bankruptcy talked about how much better the work environment, handling of programs, and overall quality of employment was after Fiat took control. He did more good for that company than most people will ever realize.

Just imagine

You certainly avoided some possible bodily injury with that loon driving. The tail light scheme was genius. Be thankful he didn’t want to test the airbag system with a local tree.

Elsie is a good stand-in for the audience. She just wanders around confused and complaining about how fucking stupid everything is.

A tale of two car companies:

I’m not surprised by this corruption report. Unions wield considerable economic power in contract negotiations, and control enormous benefits funds. Lots of money + lots of economic power —> self serving corruption. UAW union leadership has become a hereditary elite, not unlike the French Bourbon dynasty or North…