Quote:
Originally Posted by Hubert Farnsworth
Emissions (too much NOx), Not designed to meet NHTSA and federal crash safety standards, etc. Those pesky rules and regulations that keep cars getting fatter and more powerful, as well as favoring gasoline powered vehicles that were flex-fuel capable in order for the manufacturers to only count the percentage of fuel burned that was actually fossil fuels for CAFE, at least before the loopholes are closed, etc. Take your pick.  |
I have to refute the above as its wrong, the LUPO passed US crash tests, yet still was not brought over.
The NOX issue is more likely but during that timeframe (when the lupo was made) was not all that important either as very similarly designed Diesel VWs still made it over and regs were different back then.
Those pesky rules are increasingly not making any logical sense. Most of the issues in the rules between us and Europe are with ride height, bumper height, view angles, material composition and source and other BS
AKA fantasy reasons.
Many like to defend the safety aspect but its mostly just BS and smoke, its not like we are comparing a Euro car being a 1970 Subaru 360 safety wise to a US car being an A1 battletank.
The differences are indeed very minor, in fact following Euro standards you might be more likely to survive a low speed crash than a US car in the same situation, but I digress.
I find it very unfortunate that we are basically mislead and lied to about why our US market needs to be protected from Euro spec cars.
The same statements are true of much of the pollution related regulation, outside CA there is no reason to burn 20% more fuel to have a lower percentage of a couple of types of pollution.
We need to organize to get these rules changed, aligning ourselves with Europe or at least making exceptions from both sides would help both countries and offer choice and competition, even if you could only do grey market imports, it would still be better than nothing.
Cheers
Ryan