Doug, Re: Yeah, the real situation is a 250hp engine that gets 20mpg vs a 200hp engine that gets 15mpg. The latter has to be priced considerably lower, hence AMD's continuing problems.>
Give it up on cars. You just don't know.
I'll give you an example. For a while back in the early '70s I drove a Datsun 2000. Little sports car. Known as the SRL-211U, IIRC.
First gear pulled ~65 MPH. By 50 MPH I could hold any Goat (Pontiac GTO). In my second no street Goat could hold with it.
Second went to over 100 where I went third. Third, I never ran out, but did see 127 and accelerating rapidly. Fourth and Fifth to go. The fastest I ever ran the thing was around 145, coming back from Rome, NY, on I 385 in a rain storm after delivering a crank shaft and head to a fellow up there, Dave Manzolini, who needed the parts to run the SCCA Championship race at Road Atlanta in another SRL-311U. This was the early 1970s.
The other side of the story. In ~ 1977 there was a severe gas crunch. Couldn't get your tank filled, IIRC, unless you had the right license plate number. My, now ex wife was in a hospital, Boston, for an operation. ~300 miles from Trenton. ~10 gallon tank on that Datsun. Easy on the throttle I made it up on a tank, visited, refilled, and made it back.
Over 30 MPG each way on that car.
A car that would eat Goats(Lucky to get 12 MPG) alive at anything over 1/2 mile and deliver, driven right, over 30 MPG.
-tgp |
