alfadriver said:
In reply to frenchyd :
It was pointing out that the malaise cars lost power, because lighter cars with the "same" engine were considerably slower. Sorry that you could not figure that out.
BTW, in the malaise era, air bags were not a thing. They were not part of nominal cars until about a decade after that era ended, so I'm not sure why you think it's relevant to this discussion.
I went into deep discussion about that on a post that somehow disappeared.
Explaining the whys and not vilifying the stuff that typically got ripped off and blamed. About an engine cammed to make power at 2500 RPM couldn't use the same port sizes or valves as one that made peak power at 6500rpm. Lower compression to meet 87 octane requirements. Etc etc.
How even though they were smaller they still weighed as much because it wasn't just the bumpers that added weight. It was the strengthening to allow those bumpers to take the impacts. Designed in crush zones. Then the side impact requirements adding weight to doors , cowls and throughout the car. Strengthening to make shoulder harness safe. And still allow for coming side impact airbags.
I didn't use this but I should have.
Look at a early ish Ford Falcon and compare it with its replacement.
Just so we are on the same page, the malaise era wasn't one year. It was the whole period from the 1970's right up through the introduction of OBD2 and even to a degree beyond that.
From my perspective, peak Malaise was 1975, when the base 350 in the Corvette made an utterly sad 165 HP. You can't just say "the 70's," since 1970 still had plenty of big horsepower options. It was a rapid decline as automakers found ways to comply with EPA regs, and a very slow recovery/evolution as cars got dramatically smaller and engine tech saw a return of performance while simultaneously improving in the areas of emissions and fuel economy. I don't consider the 80's part of the Malaise era--more like the beginning of the era of Japanese dominance, since they had been doing excellent small cars forever as US automakers were just starting to try to figure out how to make one.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
I love it when people refer to it as the Malaise era. It actually wasn't that bad when you consider that Muscle Cars weren't that fast. The Gross HP they used back in the day was more of a marketing ploy than actual power output, and the switch to a standardized SAE net hp happened to closely coincide with EPA regs causing a neutering of cams and compression. The emissions control things they put on didn't cost HP, but everyone seems to want to delete them in the hopes of suddenly getting an extra 50 hp.
The more people call it Malaise, the more those cars stay cheaper. I'll take all the 70s and 80s stuff for myself on the cheap.
My grandfather had a '72 LTD with the 400M. He constantly lamented that it wasn't a '71 because his Motor repair manual had the '71 listed at something like 100 more hp. I found that hard to believe so I dug into it. What could the difference be? Compression was the same. Cam specs were the same. I came to the conclusion that the biggest difference with that particular engine between '71 and '72 was actually the decal on the air cleaner lid.
alfadriver said:
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Not sure they didn't cost any HP. Many of the solutions required a carb to run rather odd- either lean to eliminate HC and CO or rich plus a air pump to deal with the early catalysts without fuel injection control. Or even the rudementry EGR that caused problems. The one car I have direct experience with was the Alfas of the era, and the SPICA/cam tuning did cost 20 hp, as well as the drag of the air pump and the exhaust block from the early catalyst design.
It was pretty easy to undo, but I would not call it not having an impact.
The kind of irony in the story was that GM had EFI, so they knew more about it than most other US manufacturers, but didn't use it. At the same time, I've seen Ford's EEC I, which took up the trunk of a Pinto at the time.
Still, how quick was a 5.0l Mustang in 1969 vs. 1974? And the latter one was smaller and lighter. Even if the C&D numbers are super duper optimistic, the change from just under 7 sec to over 12 0-60 would suggest that there's more to the stated power loss than gross to SAE.
Your Mustang example is comparing apples to Cyprus trees. '74 Mustang had a vastly different mission than a '69. The latter was being marketed as an economy car and didn't even offer a V8. A much better comparison would be between a '69 small block Corvette and a '74 small block Corvette. There is a difference for sure but it isn't all that great. And some of that difference can be attributed to extra weight required for the insurance lobby (bumpers).
frenchyd said:
alfadriver said:
ddavidv said:
One of my racing buddies had a couple Citation X-11s when he was younger. They actually weren't terrible.
GM sold a LOT of X body cars. They were a sales success, hampered only by problems being rushed into production. A common theme at the time as the Big 3.5 battled the invasion of imports. I have yet to watch the History Guy video, but there are several excellent videos on these cars on a channel called "Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History".
Just think how much more of a success they would have been if they were done well....
And I don't know my GM history, but one thing that really bugged me working for their neighbor was when a perfectly good car was stopped and all of the upper management said that they knew exactly what the problem was. That closed a number of plants around the US. And then a few years later, replacing that car cost an extra few billions- as opposed to actually fixing what was wrong.
IMHO, that's what Japan (being very general) does best- understands the issues and just develops it. Even if that means the car gets bigger over 40 years of production.
But I digress....
During the Roger Smith era his goal wasn't to make a big profit for GM, rather make a big profit for Roger Smith.
A lot of ways he did that involved getting rid of even profit making divisions. Instead of making a profit making parts for example he sold that division and showed the income as profit. Then if the new buyers raised parts prices to cover costs he would buy those parts from elsewhere, Germany for example.
Thus even though GM paid more for parts eventually he personally profited from the sale of that division.
Low volume cars were constantly on the chopping block. He could even profit from closings. Yet GM regularly was short changed ( typically that failed to show up until after he left).
Normally expensive divisions like quality control, engineering, and even design were reduced and reduced again and again. Yet cost cutting was busy as a beaver looking for a few cents here and a few cents there.
In reply to A 401 CJ :
According to the info I got, it was 5.0l vs. 5.0l Not all of that performance drop was for fuel economy, a lot of it was for emissions. But the change in engine really was a big thing for the malaise performance.
Again, the latter car was actually lighter, so the change in gearing and engine output just gutted the car.
My point was to show that the "economy" car with a v8 was pretty sad compared the heavier muscle car with the same displacement (and history) engine- and most of that was due to emissions- one would never make the engine less efficient (which is what the compression lowering and cam changes did) to gain fuel economy.
I think there is some argument back and forth between some here who are actually both right. I believe that emissions equipment did indeed impede performance. However, on the other hand, the car companies weren't even trying. They were done with performance because it wasn't where they felt the market was moving. But they could have done a lot better if they'd wanted to. Take for example the '73 and '74 Pontiac Super Duty. That one would run neck and neck with anything from '69 or '70 and still meet emissions and safety regs. But they axed it because there weren't but a handful of guys willing to pay for that.
There were two big differences in 71/72/73.
First, the beginning of the EPA cars had smaller cams and less compression to reduce NOx and HC emissions. That accounted for a decent drop in power. The big thing that happened about the same time was that they went from Gross HP to SAE Net HP. Gross HP was when they put the engine on the dyno with no accessories, straight pipes, a monster carb, and it output 375 hp. Then you throw in a healthy bit of marketing. If GM dyno'd a Camaro engine at 375, but the Mustang that year was advertising 385, the marketing team would call it 395 hp. Then you had the LS6 big block advertised at 475hp but it actually made more like 525... but insurance companies wouldn't insure it if they said it was 525.
After SAE net ratings were adopted, they are all tested as installed. They had the full exhaust, all the accessories, etc. What this meant was that any given engine might show 350 hp rated as Gross and 260 hp rated as net. They make the same actual output and would feel the same in the car, just different ways of measuring.
When people saw the brochures in the 70s advertising a 454 with only 215 hp and they remembered back to the days when a 454 made 400 hp, they were quick to blame the EGR valve, the air injection, or any of the other new vacuum hoses they saw under the hood, but in reality it was a combination of smaller cams, less compression, AND the change in the way they rated hp.
That 215 hp 454 might equate to 350 hp under the gross rating method, so in reality the engine wasn't quite as neutered as people thought.
In my former line of work, we did a lot of muscle car restorations. Trust me... a 335 hp 67 GTO is not as fast as you might think, especially because by today's standards, it's only about 260 hp.
Not Nust America but also the rest of the world. In 1959 Jaguar put 3 carbs on their 6 cylinder engine and called it 265 horsepower.
No matter How I tuned I could never get one over 180 horsepower yet it was regularly clocked at 150+ mph. By the worlds press.
Nearly 40 years later it was published that it was a really highly "tuned" ( read that as all out race motor).
