#61
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#62
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Even shorter than Bucharest - Tessaloniki (Greece), which is under 500 miles. Gush, for such long distance I would ride only a big car or the train.
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#63
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That's what people-And foreigners, often-Never seem to realize- or understand-America is a BIG damn place. Tennessee, my state, if you folded it over at the northeastern tip, Memphis would be somewhere out in the Atlantic ocean.. And Tennessee really isn't all THAT big..I left home one morning to see a gal graduate from RN-nursing school-it was about 6.30 in the morning, & we drove to Memphis... We got there about 2.30-3PM...10, 11 hours, & we never left Tennessee !
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Benevolent Despot |
#64
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Back when I was honestly employed (no remarks!) our Korean colleagues wanted to do a signal survey of the new HDTV broadcasts in cities across the US. They announced they were planning to spend a week or less. I couldn't get them to understand the impracticality until I sent them a map of the continental US with a map of South Korea to the same scale superimposed. The project quickly condensed to a couple of cities.
I suggest that any one contemplating a cross-US trip make such a map with their own country superimposed to scale over the US map to let the full import sink in. Similarly, one of our Korean colleagues stationed in Illinois decided to vacation by driving his family across country in a rented motor home - they got as far as Utah, turned in the RV and flew back. This is not meant to discourage anyone, just to encourage planning realistically. |
#65
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Then Chrysler came out with the slant six, which was a thoroughly modern engine. Nascar decided to have a 6 cylinder economy car race. Ford and Chevy just raced some off-the-rack 6 cylinders, which were those ancient designs. Chrysler actually had their racing department work on the slant six for the race. 7 Dodges/Plymouths were in the race. They beat the pants off of Chevy and Ford, taking the first 7 places by a long shot. The race was so boring, they decided to never do it again. Also, a friend of mine who used to buy and sell a lot of cars back in the day told me a story once about a Chrysler slant six. He said the car was going to the junk yard, so he decided to blow the engine just for fun. He said it took a good 10 minutes of over-revving it to do it in. That's insane! Well consider that most of those straight six motors were very old design, and also because they were the 'cheap' engine option, they usually only had a small single barrel carburetor. I'm sure you could get better performance out of a motor like that now, either with a better carb or fuel injection. Last edited by MadMan; 11-01-2019 at 10:08 PM. |
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#66
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There is a book I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone who is even marginally interested in cars in reading-"Truck", by a chap named John Jerome. It is the story of the trials & tribulations of a guy who buys & semi-restores a 1949 Dodge half ton pickup. He basically just gets it to use on his farm in New Hampshire, not for making a show truck out of. It was written in the early Seventies, it has some "New Age"post hippie-era jibberish, but still is a pretty good read. Jerome is/was a native Texan, also was an editor for one of the national car magazines, so he speaks w/quite a bit of authority. A small book, it doesn't take long to read, & its one of those books that kinda makes you feel good after you read it. I'm sure its LONG outta print, but it might be available at some online source, like EVERYTHING else is...
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Benevolent Despot |
#67
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But why in the early '60's they didn't designed a engine that would be a little more modern and offer a liitle more power at let's say 50 cubic inches less then the models of engines that where still existing.
On a YouTube video some one noticed that the Americans where among the 1st to put fuel injection on cars (Germans had that too), but other went ahead of the Americans. For long distance I like the trains. I would like to be direct trains from Bucharest to Paris and Berlin (from Paris I can go to London) with sleeping cars and individual shower room (there are this kind of sleeping cars), but no chance... well, there are direct trains from Viena to Berlin (you can go with train from Bucharest to Viena), but to Paris no. Probably I will have to step on my princeples and get into a plane. Getting back to automobiles, well, some of them still have theyr fans outside U.S.A. or the Americas. Same as British cars, through all there in Europe there is mania with German cars (except with some countries), some Italian cars and maybe some French cars. There where when "F.I.A.T." (Italy) licesend car production to U.S.S.R., Poland, Austria, Spain... Last edited by Telecolor 3007; 11-01-2019 at 04:12 AM. |
#68
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As mentioned above Chrysler did bother to make a more modern engine fairly early.... Ignoring the Chevy corvair(and GM senior compacts), Studebaker Lark, Nash 600 and Metropolitan, and Ford Falcon and Crosley brand cars (which in the 50s went under just like American Bantam did a decade earlier) American auto makers were not concerned with making smalll efficient cars till the 70s. The concerns were price (the main reason Pre-WWII engines were made for so long), features and comfort.
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Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 |
#69
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But the modern engines where a little bit more economic?
I've heard that the focus mainly on price was something that affected in a bad way the American industry. |
#70
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I've seen that caddy vs. datsun crash test before... the view from inside the datsun where the caddy's front end dives is really striking. Whenever traffic comes to a stop on the DC beltway I'm looking behind me for a car nose diving... I've seen it a few times, thankfully I haven't been clobbered.
-J |
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#71
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made them bigger & poured more gas in the old days! Keep in mind Americans loved straight line preformance. We didnt care about going fast around corners. Most cars were built so you could go fast WITHOUT much feel of the road. A "cloud like ride" or "sitting on your sofa". Motors were for the most part very reliable. The average new car buyer kept it 4 yrs, apx 80K miles. The new owners often ran them up to 150-200 K miles. By then the car was eaten by rust but the drive line was still good. New car reliability is more to do with better small parts IMHO. We used to constantly change hoses, belts, plugs, starters, etc. It never ended BUT was easy to do & cheap. Most the time you could get home then deal with it...... 73 Zeno LFOD ! |
#72
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To be onest, I like cars that can be easily repaired/fixed. Too much electronics aren't good. After all it's car, not a space ship.
@ compu85 : what crash? |
#73
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There's also a video where a 1959-60 model 4 door Chevy gets smacked in the front by a more modern car. It made me SICK not only because the crash test dummies got a real workout-bouncing around all over the car, but because the Shivverlay looked to initially be in really good shape... Then when the impact happened, you saw all the RUST comin' out from everywhere.. The body, IIRC, deformed pretty badly too, not necessarily on account of the rust. We've all heard those older cars were built tougher & could "Take It".. Well the Chevy pretty much folded up like a Cheap Suit.. But, in '57, GM scrapped their decades old double channel frame design, that had 2 side members going from the front of the car to the tail end, in favor of a centrally mounted frame that provided little or no protection in collision, its basic duty was to allow designers to lower the overall height of the car...Some GM divisions didn't want to use the design, since it was felt it wasn't safe, & indeed in 1965 GM went back to on their "Big" cars to the double channel frame design that they'd used before..
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Benevolent Despot |
#74
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As for efficiency, gas was cheap back in the day. Even if it wasn't quite as cheap as you might imagine, people didn't care, they just kept filling up. The economy must have been better back then. To be fair, gas is still pretty cheap in America compared to... literally most other countries in the world. It's probably about $3.00 per gallon (~4L) where I'm at, right now. And people complain about the price. But then you go to Europe and it's probably two or three times that. So fuel economy really was not a pressing issue. Hell, it still isn't, really, but people here like to imagine that it is. Quote:
Last edited by MadMan; 11-01-2019 at 10:28 PM. |
#75
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1st emission regulation where introduced in California in 1966.
Yes, gas was cheap back then and probably no one thought that they shoul reduce cosumption of fuel. There where day when in Romania with a minimal wage you could but around 400-480 U.S. gallons of fuel! But cars where very expensive then. Dern, even with most streets in not very good shape you could go from one end of Bucharest to the other in no more then 30-40 minutes. And since there wheren't so many cars, fuel economy was grater. In the early '70's gas was becoming more costly, but it wasn't so expensive up untill 1977-1979. Most cars around here could do 16-24 m.p.g. back in the day. And we had (no very big) busses with V8 gas engines (and trucks too!). In Romania price for gas is around 3.80-4 U.S. Dollars per U.S. gallon. In U.S. there are areas where I heard there is even around 4.50 U.S.D. per U.S. gallon, but you know, in U.S.A. 800-1000 dollars is a small wage, here the same sallary is big. Last edited by Telecolor 3007; 11-02-2019 at 05:58 AM. |
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