by Michael D Cooper

I don’t think of myself as a conspiracy theorist, but sometimes I feel like I may behave as one. The reason is that if you get me on the topic of the automotive industry and the fuel efficiency of cars I’ll rant for hours (usually until I’ve cleared the room). OK, I’m not quite that bad anymore-I can gauge the boredom factor of my audience, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure. As gas prices start to approach $4/gallon, people aren’t dismissing me quite so quickly anymore.
So how’s my rant go?
Well the first thing I like to bring up is that cars today really don’t get very good gas mileage when compared to the mileage that cars have gotten over the years. Sure we look at the hybrids and we are impressed that they can get over 50MPG, but honestly, that’s no great feat. The 1984 Honda Civic Coupe got 64MPG on the highway and 48 in the city. There’s no hybrid out there today that can match those numbers-not even the current Honda Civic Hybrid!
The modern Civic Hybrid doesn’t get the same mileage for one really simple reason. It’s heavier. Much of that extra weight is from all of the creature comforts that we have come to appreciate in our cars (and that massive rechargeable battery in the car’s belly). Most people would be surprised to know that modern cars typically outweigh the bulky steel beasts from the 60s and 70s. The 1968 Dodge Charger (the Duke’s of Hazard’s General Lee) is outweighed by a Toyota Camry by several hundred pounds.
I tell you this because it is necessary to refute one of the most common arguments that I hear against our car’s getting better gas mileage: "If the manufacturer’s could get better mileage out of our cars, they would."
That is total bunk
If you look at the average MPG of production vehicles in the USA, it hovers around exactly what the government requires those averages to be. When the government raises the CAFÉ requirements, the manufacturers make their cars get more miles per gallon. Sure they complain about it the whole way, because we’ve all gotten used to having passable fuel economy and all of the bells and whistles too. Now they have to work out a way to give us both. And they can.
Keep in mind that that 1984 Honda civic that got 64 MPG on the highway didn’t have fuel injection; it had no computer to regulate its systems - it used a carburetor (essentially a device with tubes shaped like hour glasses) to mix the air and the fuel.
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