If you’re a car enthusiast, you’ve daydreamed about living in another era, one when the cars were more stylish, faster, or more compelling to drive. For some of you, it might be the pre-war era, when motoring was still new and going for a drive was an adventure, rather than a traffic-plagued chore. For others, it might be the 1950’s, when tailfins and chrome reigned supreme. And others might fantasize about the days when muscle cars ruled the Earth, when gas was cheap and smog control had yet to put a stranglehold on performance.
But what about today? By some measures, the Golden Age of Motoring is happening right now. That proof can be found in a report produced by the Environmental Protection Agency, of all people. Within the pages of “Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 Through 2010” are a number of interesting statistics that, at the least, illustrate the incredible evolution of automotive technology and performance in the last 35 years.
Fast Times
The most frequently used metric to measure a vehicle’s performance—how fast it can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph—has dropped dramatically since 1975, according to the EPA. In 1975, the average vehicle took 14.1 seconds to hit 60 mph from a standstill. But by 2010, the time had dropped to 9.5 seconds, an improvement of 33 percent.
This is because the average vehicle’s pounds-per-horsepower, the so-called “power-to-weight ratio” has improved in every model year, aside from 2009. Pounds per horsepower is calculated by dividing the vehicle’s weight by its horsepower to reveal how many pounds each horsepower must carry. It follows that the fewer pounds each horsepower is responsible for, the better the vehicle’s performance.
What’s Under the Hood
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: There’s no replacement for displacement. Car guys love to make a big deal about the size of an engine, but the EPA report clearly shows that there’s more to performance than how many cylinders are under the hood.
Even as average horsepower increased from 1975 to 2010, the percentage of V8 engines in new cars decreased, from 62 percent in 1975 to just 16 percent in 2010. During the same period, the percentage of four-cylinder engines increased from 20 percent to 48 percent. The percentage of V8’s bottomed out at 12 percent in 2009, while the four-cylinder market share peaked at 55 percent in 1987.
Better Living Through (Engine) Technology
The key to getting more horsepower out of engines is determined by the design and technology employed. Put simply, the technology that goes into an average engine in the 2010 model year makes an engine from 1975 look like a glorified boat anchor.
For example, in 1975, the number of multi-valve engines—this is an engine with more than one intake and exhaust valve per cylinder—doesn’t even register as a percentage. In 1987, 11 percent of vehicles employed this technology. By 2010, that number had risen steadily to its peak of 86 percent in 2010.
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