What kind of car do you drive?

[calpon]

Manual tranny Acura TL. 6 years old and hope to get another 6-8 years more years so I can give it to my son (If there is any more gas to be had)

[Birma]

Manuals get phased out because any potential for efficiency gain is defeated by the driver running it. A computer knows how to drive for milage and emissions, people in general don't. Also auto's have got much more efficient. Thus why many models where both transmissions are offered the auto gets better milage. As regulations get harder, they need to remove the human from the equation.

This is very interesting as in the UK the CO2 emissions listed for automatics are almost without exception higher than for their manual equivalents. Company car tax in the UK is based soley around CO2 and so for me, a company car driver, I always go for the manual. I may have been tempted by a semi-automatic (flippy padels?) but for CO2 listings. Traditionally automatics in the UK have been an expensive luxury item on cars. This is starting to change.

Through choice I like Landrovers, no logical reason, just the grrrr , boys toys type of thing. Through spending my life on motorways and company car tax I drive an uber efficient BMW 3 series Tourer. Our home car is a Peugot 207 as the dealer is just down the road, friendly and gave us a good deal

Fascinating thread - well done Kevin.

[KevinBarrett]

(If there is any more gas to be had)

A good observation. I am sure there will be gasoline, but the cost of it will be prohibitively high. Your grandchildren, if you have any, and if you have some ancient collectible car, may give you a gallon of gasoline at Christmas so that you can relive the glory days and drive around the block.

I have a feeling we'll stretch our last bit as far as it will go. There is still a solid infrastructure of public roads and gasoline distribution, and we will not readily abandon it. Before the end, cars will be fully electric at the wheels with a small gasoline motor running at peak efficiency to recharge the batteries only.

[Greg Beetham]

I suppose one could always retrofit a modern fission power-cell steam turbine when petrol runs out so one could contimue to enjoy that classic/vintage automobile.
Greg

ps. Things might get a little dodgy if deisel runs out in the meantime though, just imagine no farm tractors, no trucks, no cargo ships, no trains....planes are banned for nonessential trips...they use tonnes of fuel each on just one trip.

[David Kilpatrick]

Diesel won't run out while we still have cows to melt down. My brother runs his diesel Merc on chip fat. Any kind of oil seems OK - corn oil, lard, olive oil, rapeseed oil, Chinese restauranty and chip shop waste - you name it, it runs cars.

Soylent Green here we come, only 'Green' diesel instead... I guess my middle-aged spread would be good for about 5 miles in a Landrover.

David

[KevinBarrett]

Soylent Green here we come, only 'Green' diesel instead... I guess my middle-aged spread would be good for about 5 miles in a Landrover.

David

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!

[PhotoTraveler]

Well, bio-fuels are more destructive than helpful to the environment. The world is starting to catch on to the scam of bio-fuels. Still, anyone should be very warned about them. Few diesels are designed for more than 5-10% Bio-Diesel. The stuff is very damaging to the engines, eats away the seals and o-rings in the fuel system, which is the major part of a diesel. Don't be suckered by hippies who try to claim it's good for an engine. I had to use 50% bio in an engine for about 2 weeks, with not many miles put on the engine. Destroyed one of the injectors and this was a new engine. Total failure of injection system is very common when putting bio diesel in a new (say from mid-90s up). Further making things worse is the lack of standards for it, so you just don't know what your getting. If you value your warranty and your car working, don't running bio-diesel.

The simple reality is petroleum will run out in time. And we need to transition away from it far in advance. Cars are one of the worse (as in dumb) uses of oil products. They are much more critical for other uses, such as plastics, airplanes, ships. We need to electrify what we can (trains), and shift cars that way as much as we can.

Europe and Many Asian countries are well underway there, of course the smallness and high density of those parts of the world make Electric Trains, small cars, etc much easier. The US is coming to the reality, but it will be a long hull for us to really get an electric train grid up and running.

What will save the car is Fusion Power, and possibly wind and solar power. Once we can get were we have an excess of zero emission cheap electrical energy, we can then afford to blow that energy on hydrogen production. We begin to re-purpose some of our massive natural gas pipelines to hydrogen pipelines, and begin running hydrogen IC engines (not stupid fuel cells). Still, it will be a race between that, and the electric car. Which even with what we have today is very acceptable. Just not being done (what you see on the market isn't very indicative of what can be done today).

Diesel won't run out while we still have cows to melt down. My brother runs his diesel Merc on chip fat. Any kind of oil seems OK - corn oil, lard, olive oil, rapeseed oil, Chinese restauranty and chip shop waste - you name it, it runs cars.

Soylent Green here we come, only 'Green' diesel instead... I guess my middle-aged spread would be good for about 5 miles in a Landrover.

David

[Greg Beetham]

The thought of soylent green coming true is really gloomy, I hope we can find some answers before that happens.
Thing is, are we smart enough?
If you look at what happens to some microbes placed in a culture dish and allowed to consume and breed unchecked....they finish off with consuming each other......game over.
Now do a fast forward on the human race and planet earth.....it's just a matter of scale....
Greg

ps. Now I have too consume some electricity and watch a bike race.

[David Kilpatrick]

Hydrogen pipelines? That would be an interesting and fairly explosive development...

David

[bonneville]

I drive a grey one with 7 manual gears (incl backwards) 330d (sorry planet but I pay enough in road tax).



but my ID derives from my preferred mode of transportation:



Triumph's best - 5 forward gears

[Winston]

Love the bonnie picture!

I had four Truimphs. The first was a used, beatup 1956 TR6. It blew a piston after a short time. It lasted long enough to get me hooked.

The next was a new 1962 Bonnevile T120. I put 90k miles on it before it was stolen.

The third was a used 1963 Bonneville T120. I didn't like that one much. It had the huge super quiet mufflers that didn't do much for performance...also stolen but recovered.

The last one was a 1966 Bonneville T120C. It was a limited edition competition model. The main difference was bigger intake valves, ports and carburetors; high compression pistons; and insane intake and exhaust cams...definitely not a street machine. It became docile enough to ride on the street by replacing the exhaust cam with the standard version. It had clip-on bars and a full dusbin fairing. After 120k miles an intake cam tappet failed...parts unavailable!

Sold it for parts (surprisingly good price). The fairing still hangs in my garage...can't part with it.

Next and final bike was a Yamaha 750C Triple...as soul-less as a digital sewing machine.

Sorry for the long OT...I guess Bonneville's pic kinda got to me.

P.S. I have two Ron Cooper bicycles. Anyone on the East side of the pond want to talk about those?

[PhotoTraveler]

bada bing.

Not as much as hydrogen bombs.

Hydrogen pipelines? That would be an interesting and fairly explosive development...

David

[bonneville]

Love the bonnie picture!
I had four Truimphs.

Mine's 3 years old now but the day I collected her from the dealer she was parked outside in the sunshine and I heard through an open window an elderly couple stop and admire it. The old woman said, "look at that lovely Bonneville" (she knew her bikes) and the bloke said, "yeah, and hasn't it been looked after well".

I'd only collected it on my bike trailer that morning so it didn't have more than 2 miles on the clock and had only been registered for a day

Sorry for the long OT...I guess Bonneville's pic kinda got to me.

No problem Winston, they do that. There hasn't been a single day for the past 45 years that I haven't had a bike (or several) in my garage. At least 10 Triumphs, several BMWs old and new and various Hondas. I started with a BSA B40 350 thumper in the 60's

Brian

[KevinBarrett]

I took a couple of shots of my MX-5 yesterday in preparation for a shoot later. A coworker want's her son's picture with his project car, an orange 1979 Camaro.