100% agree with everything in this post so far, unsurprisingly for those that know me at least.
Now this will turn into a right old rant, so buckle up dudes, crack open a bottle, and let me sound off for a mo!
So, to further Johns initial point, and put my own slant on it (yes i know i've harped on all about this before!) i blame the hairy legged women and bearded greenie liberalist of this world!
their dreams to get us back onto horse and cart are far fetched even by their deluded imagination, so second best for them is to have us all suffer the consequence of short sighted poorly designed cars and components, namely all coming under the umbrella of emission control and european directives on vehicle construction.
the effects of this could be felt as early as in the 90's, with the advent and arrival of "the Cat" in August 1992, and i'll use my own previous history of none alfa cars (there was such a time!) to demonstrate.
My old Cavalier SRi, 2.0litre, 4 cylinder, went like the clappers and still did decent MPG if driven with that in mind. The Cat arrived, along with allsorts of new emission restrictions we were sold as necessary for "older, dirtier, and in efficient" engines, and overnight ruined the Vauxhall SOHC and particularly the DOHC engines.
We were left with the 2.0 Ecotec motor, which on paper, should have still outperformed my old SRi, NOT a Cat in hells chance! as a so engined Calibra soon proved (my sisters!) it was diabolical!
So to get comparable performance to the old 2.0 4 cyl SRi, the new cavaliers, needed a 2.5 V6 to get anywhere near it, and so you can see where this is heading eh?
It was far heavier, almost only just as quick as my SRi, but the MPG was terrible.
So did the greenies win anything with their successful lobbying for this kind of "improvement" to the internal combustion engine? NO
Should they have shut the hell up and let manufacturers take a naturalistic line of development towards competition amongst themselves? YES
Are we the car buying/using consumers treated like mushrooms? (kept in the dark and fed poo!) YES, most definitely
and i'll give you another example of this too.
i was and still am a big japanese rice burner fan, cant get away from it, they all make bloody good reliable cars, but its their performance stuff i was into a while back, and got involved with importing and modifying a fair few too.
one of my favourites, having been through the whole range of Z cars with my dad, was the Z32 300ZX twin Turbo. A car that was actually outlawed from official import into the uk in conjunction with the Catalytic Converters arrival (August 92) and new emission laws, along with its fellow Supra, Mitsubishi 3000GT, Mazda RX7 etc etc but also signified the end of production very soon for our our Cosworth powered stuff too.
Now, pretty odd that, seeing as the japanese were way ahead of us with the install of Cats, the use of unleaded, and such like, but they (the UK Government and European associates) reasoned their argument claiming that a 3.0 V6 Twin Turbo, resulting in 280-300hp is simply too inefficient, and its exhaust gas and toxins were spawning freaks of nature such as hairy legged moustached ladies with dungarees, dodgy hair cuts and doc martens sporting plackards with messages of doom regarding your choice of mobility!
Some years later, whilst importing precisely these sorts of cars directly from Japan, i bought, and subsequently modified my own Oct 92, 300zx TT, starting with throwing away the Cats, AIV valves, recirc circuits etc , and anything else i could remotely relate to the strangulation of the motors natural abilities. Stock motor, freeflow everything in and out, Double the boost levels, Injectors, and Hard Chip, and we were at the saturation point of T2.5 turbos, running about 400bhp on 98ron fuel.
Ironically, over a period of 5+years of ownership, it mot'd each time with absolute ease. The last time i had it in for ticket, the mot inspector tested is against the latest emission targets, updated 2012, and guess what, an easy pass.
That car, tuned purely for performance, ran clean as a whistle, yet did 400bhp and 25 to the gallon on a run, and passed emission testing limits 20 years the cars junior!
Have we moved forward any? Not at all then it would seem eh, in fact, i think we've gone every bit backwards. Cars are heavier, engines have grown, and to top it all as the ultimate insult to the "greenies" design of the world, they are all throw away cars. They won't be recycled, they won't become appreciated classics, hell you can't even change a set of rear brake pads without a manufacturers computer and software to reset the handbrake! and the car industry itself would rather you give your car in for crushing
To bring that all back into relative to Alfa's, we were told that the boxer engines would be last seen in the 145/146 because Fiat weren't willing to blow budgets trying to get it to conform to new EU emission regulation, and the same applied to the Busso based V6.
In my opinion, that was UTTER TOSH! and subsequently we are missing 2 fantastic pieces of Italian Engineering at its best, and the result is also that Alfa Romeo is a weaker brand today for it too.
The subsequent replacements for those power units, i.e. the twin sparks, which if you have one later than CF1 version, are pretty soul'less, underperforming, and greedy, and the GM/Holden version of the V6 to replace the 24v Alfa Unit, is essentially the old Senator Omega engine, which can't hold a candle to the busso in any guise.
Alfa and Fiat should have concentrated on power to weight ratio, and the pursuit of performance would have brought greater cylinder efficiency etc anyway, and we could all be running a Sud like Giulietta today with a 2.0 TBA Boxer engine, with an easy 250bhp and 40mpg, or a 3.2 V6 Brera with 400 straining Busso ponies.
8c and 4c wouldn't be exotica, they would be the norm!
Sorry for the lengthy rant, but this subject, along with Liberal Greenies who know jack about cars, really does bloomin annoy me
Next installment, Unleaded Fuel - Its a Killer!
