Quote:
Originally Posted by theunchosen
The US market doesn't have any real competitors for lightweight. Lotus is the only manufacturer that focuses on this as a design philosophy(that sells in the US, TVR, Ariel, Caparo, Tramontana and a handful of others handle overseas markets).
A base model Civic weighs in around 32-3500 lbs and gets 30 odd mpg. Cut that in half and then cut the engine displacement in half. Might not double the FE, but its going to be alot closer to 60 mpg than not.
But it won't happen. The only individuals who are willing to get into a car that has poor crash test ratings are the ones who want a car that goes very fast. the average person would not buy a car if the competitor came out and said their opponent got 2/5 stars instead of 5/5....
|
Oh, and don't forget me. Crash test ratings mean nothing to me, honestly.
I remember the 4th gen Civics... Light was a design feature. In fact, Honda in general in days of yore, light was a design feature.
There is a story about
Soichiro Honda from back when the company first started:
As the lead engineer and founder of Honda, Soichiro believed that weight and performance went hand in hand. Excess weight meant lack of efficiency, and that meant higher prices in all aspects, both for the company and for the consumer. Some felt he was going too far when he would troll the assembly lines, measuring and triple-checking the assembled product. When he found a bolt that was a few threads too long, he would remove it, document it, file those threads off, document that, then require that all new orders of the aforementioned bolt were ordered to the new specified length, and all blueprints of the bolt be updated to show the refined specification.