Challenge; exellent energy use AND red-hot musclecars.

I think we all know that there is so much we could be doing to utilise our energy better; combined heat and power generation, industrial energy recycling, alternative energies, robust mass transit, high speed rail ra, ra, ra. That's great, very worthy and very convenient for a lot of people a lot of the time, environment, society, ra, ra, ra. But its not getting my heart racing the way gunning my old V8 did.

What I want to know is, in a world where right from the start we made the most use of the energy we generated, can musclecars still exist? Perhaps, in a world where much of the mundane transport market is taken up by robust mass transit, cars are seen more as toys and therefore musclecars are even faster?
 

NothingNow

Banned
I think we all know that there is so much we could be doing to utilise our energy better; combined heat and power generation, industrial energy recycling, alternative energies, robust mass transit, high speed rail ra, ra, ra. That's great, very worthy and very convenient for a lot of people a lot of the time, environment, society, ra, ra, ra. But its not getting my heart racing the way gunning my old V8 did.

What I want to know is, in a world where right from the start we made the most use of the energy we generated, can musclecars still exist? Perhaps, in a world where much of the mundane transport market is taken up by robust mass transit, cars are seen more as toys and therefore musclecars are even faster?

Ahem. They Have them now, Just they aren't called Muscle Cars, they are called Sports Sedans, Pony Cars and generally Sports cars.

And They can Even Turn at Top Speed! :eek:

The 2011 Ford Mustang GT gets 26mpg Hwy with a 5.0L V8 producing 412bhp, the V6 version will Produce 305bhp from it's Duratec 37 Ti-VCT and is the first car to officialy produce over 300hp and Exceed 30mpg Highway (It gets 31).

But for Every Applications(Even in your Truck) a V8 Gasoline/Petrol Engine is Pointless, For Torque you want a Diesel, no Exceptions. And If you want a Gas engine with high performance a Turbocharged or Supercharged engine with Direct Injection and Independent Variable Cam Timing will produce more power with Less weight and Less Fuel Burned, along with a Vertical Torque curve. Hence why the 2010 Ford Taurus SHO is so efficent with AWD and a curb weight of almost 4400lbs. Volkswagen Group (Audi, Bentley, SEAT, Skoda, and Vw really) and Ford (Ford, Lincoln, Mercury) are the Leaders in these technologies, with BMW in a clear third place.

Pure electric Powertrains can produce some Seriously Fun results as well.

However the Best trick to Increasing Fuel Economy is in the Immortal words of Colin Chapman: "Adding Lightness". Lotus is the Unparalleled Master of that. Now the "Omnivore" engine concept of theirs is an amazing system for Increasing Fuel economy while Burning alomst anything Perfectly.

Hybrids can be fun, but are generally too heavy to be serious sports cars.
 
I didn't mean the fuel economy of the cars, I meant the energy efficiency of our entire society. Instead of electric plants venting their heat they use it for district heating, instead of industry venting its excess heat it uses it to create steam to generate electricty, instead of roads and gridlock mass transit has a large market share, that sort of thing.

In such a world cars are less necessities and more luxury items. As such don't have to be as fuel efficient, quiet and comfortable for day to day driving, they can be faster and cooler.
 
I didn't mean the fuel economy of the cars, I meant the energy efficiency of our entire society. Instead of electric plants venting their heat they use it for district heating, instead of industry venting its excess heat it uses it to create steam to generate electricty, instead of roads and gridlock mass transit has a large market share, that sort of thing.

In such a world cars are less necessities and more luxury items. As such don't have to be as fuel efficient, quiet and comfortable for day to day driving, they can be faster and cooler.

Well... you describe pretty much the city I live in. The very large coal powerplant at the edge of the town supplies almost the entire city with steam for heating, the large industrial complex on the other side of the river uses excess heat (usually in for of steam) to pre-heat their reactors (in fact there is a lively intra-site trade in steam), and public transportation has about 40 % market share.

There are quite a lot of sports cars on the roads, so the empirical answer should be "yes".
 
I think we all know that there is so much we could be doing to utilise our energy better; combined heat and power generation, industrial energy recycling, alternative energies, robust mass transit, high speed rail ra, ra, ra. That's great, very worthy and very convenient for a lot of people a lot of the time, environment, society, ra, ra, ra. But its not getting my heart racing the way gunning my old V8 did.

What I want to know is, in a world where right from the start we made the most use of the energy we generated, can musclecars still exist? Perhaps, in a world where much of the mundane transport market is taken up by robust mass transit, cars are seen more as toys and therefore musclecars are even faster?

This really depends on the people involved. The biggest issue here is the not-insignificant problem that the environment and energy concerns came long after automobiles did. The problem with your theory is that if the vast majority of automobiles are owned by people who just use them for everyday transportation, musclecars will be more like exotics - very expensive, to make up for the fact that they are fewer and farther between. In such a world, the "musclecars" would be smaller things without V8 engines by now - they would most likely be big-engine/small-car concoctions of the modern era, cars like the Ford Focus RS, Audi RS6 and Renault Clio V6, using engines from bigger cars of that same manufacturer inside smaller chassis. Liking cars is the nature of many humans, and there are cases where V8-powered vehicles are gonna be in use - not all pickup trucks are driven by suburban yuppies, some actually are used by industrial workers, farmers and emergency personnel, after all - so there will still be bigger motors to shove in smaller cars.

Musclecars in the classical mold - medium-sized cars with gargantuan engines - make little sense from many standpoints, particularly handling, which for 1960s and 1970s musclecars isn't all that good. I once drove a 1970 Dodge Challenger with a 440 cubic inch engine. It was awesomely fast (when it could get traction), but not all that comfortable to drive and handled like a turd on wheels - I wouldn't want one unless I could make it drive better and handle better. My Pontiac G8 is what I like - a substantial-size car (I am 6'5", I don't fit in a small car) with excellent handling (except on a slippery road - I found that out the hard way one underwear-ruining night in a Seattle suburb about two years ago) and quite fast in a straight line.

I think what would more likely exist in a scenario you envision, Riain, is many examples of smaller sports cars and sports coupes in the Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster/Mazda MX-5 Miata/Toyota MR2/Alfa Romeo Spyder/Caterham 7/Pontiac Solstice mold, the idea being smaller fun cars that people can get their rocks off in, perhaps with some of them having bigger powerplants for people who want more power. (I can imagine a Solstice with the GM High-Output 3.6-liter V6 or the Miata with a turbocharged RX-7 motor.) I can also see many fast sports coupes and small sedans in the Lancer Evolution/WRX STi/Delta Integrale/Focus RS mold. To be blunt, making dragsters out of limos is, energy-wise, incredibly wasteful, and as amazing as it is to make a two and a half ton tank like most AMG Mercedes cars move as fast as they do, it's wasteful on energy.

I think perhaps the Germans here are the worst plot-losers. The first BMW M3 and Volkswagen Golf GTI models were the pocket hunters of their era, with smaller four-cylinder engines that still drove them along at respectable speeds, but their true prowess was in cornering. The E30 M3 is said to be one of the best drivers' cars ever made, even today twenty years after the last one was built. Now, the M3 has a four-liter V8 under its hood. Its orders of magnitude faster and still a helluva steer, but many feel that its lost the plot. The Golf is even worse. The newest VW Polo is slightly longer and wider than the original Golf of 1974, and the Golf has gotten bigger very generation. The newest GTI is a good set of wheels, but requires a 200-horsepower turbocharged engine to do it.

In your world, Riain, the musclecars from Detroit and Australia woulda died in the 1970s, as technology evolved. Turbocharging would have been virtually universal for performance cars by the early 1980s. By the 1990s, GM turbocharged Buick V6 would probably power most of its fast cars, including the Corvette, though high-tech engines like the Lotus-developed ZR-1 V8 would probably still make it.
 
In your world, Riain, the musclecars from Detroit and Australia woulda died in the 1970s, as technology evolved.

Well, the fastest car produced by Ford Australia is a Turbocharged I6 with 400+ Horsepower. Though that could change, with a supercharged version of Coyote replacing the current N/A 5.4L BOSS engine.

Oh, if only I was finished with university and had a full time job.......
 
Perhaps the clunker V8 would have been improved with better materials such as extensive use of aluminium and perhaps OHC conversions like that Pontiac 6 cyl from the 60s.

What about the smog factor? If in general we were producing much less smog would pollution controls strangle engines the way they did IOTL? Or would the general march of technology with an attitude to squeeze more performance out of each drop of fuel mean that cars would become less polluting anyway?
 

NothingNow

Banned
Perhaps the clunker V8 would have been improved with better materials such as extensive use of aluminium and perhaps OHC conversions like that Pontiac 6 cyl from the 60s.

What about the smog factor? If in general we were producing much less smog would pollution controls strangle engines the way they did IOTL? Or would the general march of technology with an attitude to squeeze more performance out of each drop of fuel mean that cars would become less polluting anyway?
Yes it does. To Reduce emmissions your going to want High compression, High Temperature Engines with precise Fuel metering (Computer controled Direct Injection does wonders here) to prevent excess fuel from entering the Cylinder. Also Important is reducing the amount of Chemicals and impurities in the fuel that won't burn off, like Lead, which was used as an anti-knock agent.

Actually the Type of Headers used on an engine doesn't really determine how efficient or powerful an engine is, although using 4 valve/Cylinder engines breathe better than 3v and 2v models. Hence why the various versions of the 4.6L modular V8 in the Mustang GT(4v) and F-150(3v) are so different in terms of power and efficiency.
Using Aluminum or compressed Graphite for a block cuts a lot of weight, and that's really it.

Better ways to increase Efficency and reduce Smog over all is to use stuff like HSR for intercity travel (more efficient than travel by Air or Car and almost as fast as the former), while using Nuclear, Solar and Wind power along side using Anthracite (Black and clean-burning ) Coal instead of Lignite (Brown and Full of dirt and what not) in Coal power plants, while using Heat regeneration and selling steam for heating and whatever else you need it for.
 
The move from pushrods to mass production 4 valves per cylinder would be an evolution through plain overhead cams to get the cam drives etc right for bulding in big numbers.

HSR would be part of this energy efficient world as I'd imagine it would be part of the way electricity generated via industrial heat recycling and other non-traditional means could be utilised. Decentralised electricity generation would reduce the need to eletric substations for railways and maximse energy usage by reducing transmission losses. Fast electric trains were about in Italy in 1939.
 
The move from pushrods to mass production 4 valves per cylinder would be an evolution through plain overhead cams to get the cam drives etc right for bulding in big numbers.

HSR would be part of this energy efficient world as I'd imagine it would be part of the way electricity generated via industrial heat recycling and other non-traditional means could be utilised. Decentralised electricity generation would reduce the need to eletric substations for railways and maximse energy usage by reducing transmission losses. Fast electric trains were about in Italy in 1939.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's Northeast Corridor trains were powered by GG1 electrics, which could and on occasions did run at speeds of over 100 mph, starting from 1935 (and unbelievably, the GG1s didn't bite the dust until the early 1980s, and they were only retired because of changes to environmental laws and problems with frame cracks.) If you are going with decentralized power production, you would probably have somebody think of wind turbines and put them into regular use long before the first grid power producers, which were built during WWII. You are still gonna need electric substations, though, and stuff like nuclear power plants are not gonna be popular neighbors, so you'll still have some longer-distance transmission. One other option for reducing emissions and energy usage would be using more propeller-driven engines instead of jets, or funneling turboprop exhaust through a catalyst to reduce its pollution created.

I think one option that should also be considered is diesel power, which has the advantage of big torque production. As modern makers have shown, turbodiesel engines can make major power and still get excellent mileage. (One Mercedes AMG diesel makes 310 horsepower and gets 40 mpg. Try THAT in a gasoline powered engine.....) overhead cams aren't a prerequisite for efficient engines - GM's LS-series V8s are amazingly efficient for engines as big as they are - and I can see two cams in the center of the block instead of one to drive a four valve per cylinder engine, or even a system where one pushrod operates two valves. If we are on this road, we could also start thinking about hydraulically or pneumatically operated valvetrains, too, and Miller-cycle engines.

Turbodiesel engines I think are the future of seriously-powerful cars, because modern technology can get them to rev higher, and well-designed turbodiesel engines can take ridiculous levels of boost and make jaw-dropping power. If people are serious about efficiency, they'll also make an effort to make better fuel, in both gasoline, diesel and anything else. It has never made sense to me why people only offer 87 octane for regular gasoline, if they made 91 octane the standard, automakers could retune engines for a bunch of extra power for those who want it, and you could use smaller engines in cases where efficiency is the primary concern.
 
I wasn't thinking in terms of pollution as a motivator, more as a side benefit so that it wouldn't be a factor in reducing car performance as it became IOTL in the late 60s and 70s.

I've read that the US had quite an extensive eletric railroad system in the 20s and 30s but diesels became so successful that the wires etc were pulled down. In a world where every industry which makes heat installs an electricity generator to recoup some costs you'd have hundreds of places where power is being fed into the grid which would make electric railways more competitive and a touch less infrastructure hungry.
 

NothingNow

Banned
I wasn't thinking in terms of pollution as a motivator, more as a side benefit so that it wouldn't be a factor in reducing car performance as it became IOTL in the late 60s and 70s.

I've read that the US had quite an extensive eletric railroad system in the 20s and 30s but diesels became so successful that the wires etc were pulled down. In a world where every industry which makes heat installs an electricity generator to recoup some costs you'd have hundreds of places where power is being fed into the grid which would make electric railways more competitive and a touch less infrastructure hungry.
And that all went to shit thanks to GM's Pushing Busses via somewhat illegal methods, to Cities to replace Light Rail and Streetcars.
 
What about powering muscle cars with Ethanol? Sure, Ethanol is not good for use in the mainstream automotive industry, but I think it could find a small niche in muscle cars. Find a more potent mixture of Ethanol by maybe mixing in a small amount of N2O.

Day to day travel for the majority of the population would be by electric powered mass transit and electric cars while on weekends a person could bust out the V8.
 
I wasn't thinking in terms of pollution as a motivator, more as a side benefit so that it wouldn't be a factor in reducing car performance as it became IOTL in the late 60s and 70s.

It wasn't really a factor so much as it was a consequence. Many of the pollution control devices of the day were crude things, and the removal of lead from gasoline resulted in big drops in compression ratios, and compression is power for a naturally aspirated vehicle. If the energy crisis hadn't come around, followed promptly by the first fuel economy standards in Europe and America, cars woulda kept their big engines.

I've read that the US had quite an extensive eletric railroad system in the 20s and 30s but diesels became so successful that the wires etc were pulled down. In a world where every industry which makes heat installs an electricity generator to recoup some costs you'd have hundreds of places where power is being fed into the grid which would make electric railways more competitive and a touch less infrastructure hungry.

As mentioned, GM and others used dubiously-legal tactics to dismantle America's public transport systems after WWII, which ultimately helped the (car-dominated) suburban developments.
 
A major factor in the demise of US trams was that regulated (electric utility) companies were not allowed to own non-regulated (trolley) companies due to legislation in the 30s or 40s. Without the synergy of electric companies feeding power to their transport arms the trams become vulnerable to GMs tactics and other less underhanded market forces. In the world I imagine there would be dozens of electricity producers, every industry which creates a threshold amount of waste heat would be an electricity producer. With so much juice going around I'd imagine trams would keep on going in cities where networks are built.

What about interstates? With electric trains being widespread and presumably fast enough to hold a good market share in their 200-500 mile niche and planes being used for everything about that do the intertstates get built?
 
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