We in this country are victims of the worst sort of protectionism. Early in the 1970's it became apparent to all in the industry that American car manufacturers were not going to be able to meet the stringent pollution-control standard due to go into effect in 1974; this, despite the fact that Honda, Datsun and Toyota were all handily meeting the standard as early as 1970 (in Honda's case). So GM, Chrysler and Ford went to Congress and cried like little *****es that the only way their tech-challenged Engineers could devise to meet the standard on schedule was via a device called a catalytic converter. Which would add $300-500 to the cost of their vehicles, along with detracting horsepower and reducing fuel efficiency by 4-6 miles per gallon. Congress gave in and made it mandatory for all manufacturers to install the devices in cars beginning with the 1974 model year - including the Japanese - and to pass on the added cost of the addition to consumers. To this day, cars in other countries - industrialized, civilized countries with emission standards every bit as stringent as ours - generally get better gas mileage than comparable cars in the US, largely due to the continued use of the catalytic converter here. Around 1970, the original two-cylinder Honda Civic (with the crazy "porthole" rear windshield) got 50+ MPG, and met the 1974 standard without a catalytic converter. Today, the tiny Smart car we are importing gets around 45+ MPG highway. And it's actually smaller than that Civic. Does it make sense to you that 39 years of technological advances later, we've only managed to go backwards in the technology of fuel economy?
And one of the side benefits is that Diesel engines can run perfectly well on old used (strained please) cooking oil. Go visit your local fast food chain and ask for all their used cooking oil (which they want to simply give away)...strain it and simply put it in your diesel gas tank and enjoy free gas. A great episode from Myth Busters proved this out....crazy.
maybe I should have been more specific. You are 100 percent right about catalytic converters. The only thing they've ever done is screw up horsepower and fuel economy. You would think they would have figured it out by now. If you look, though, now they are smogging diesels and making their fuel mileage drop like the gas engines. You would think the big 3 would figure it out.
When Bombardier brought two stroke emmisions in line with four stroke engines I knew anything was possible.
