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The emissions era started with US auto manufacturers trying to add components to control emissions, like air injection, egr, pcv, and catalysts. In 1973 the driveability issues were soo bad they caused a lot of accidents with cars stalling and hesitating instead of accelerating. It was soo bad at the Chevy dealership, where I worked, we just let the car run for 3 minutes before even trying to put in gear and pull it into the shop, and those were brand new cars, not yet sold to retail customers.
3 months after the Chevy Vega was introduced our shop was replacing 40 engines a month. GM tried to blame it on prestone antifreeze. How many people drain the coolant out of a one month old car and add prestone antifreeze? The original small block introduced in 1955 burned so much oil (like a quart in 200 miles) that GM told their dealerships to "pour bon ami down the carburetor with the engine running to accelerate ring to bore wear". My grandmothers 1961 Olds, with chrome moly rings took 20k miles for the rings to properly seat when it stopped burning oil. Only us old farts remember that.
In the mid 70s Honda came out with their cvcc engine and Datsun (Nissan) came out with fuel injection in the 1975 Z cars (others before that), The 55 Mercedes Gullwing was direct injection as well as the DB 601 engine in the ME 109, dating back before WW2. Neither the Honda or Nissan had a catalyst and the 75-6 Z cars did not have egr, one of the first applications of DFCO even though the injection system, built under license from Bosch, was simulatneous, not sequential. I truly despised the emission controls of that era with the exception of Hondas and Nissans solutions.
As emission controls got tighter year after year it came to the point where true innovation like Hondas lean burn system could not pass NOX regulations, even though their CO2 emissions were at the same levels as modern hybrids. I never understood the rationale that allowed a 9 MPG gas hog to pass emissions while a VX was forced from the market due to the slightly too high NOX, which could have been cured if development had not been stifled by regulations that simply made no sense to me.
Today emission controls are fairly thoroughly integrated into the basic design of engines, but there are still significant improvements, of which transonic is one (my opinion), that hold the promise for finally building a "clean" engine that is clean by design and not by adding a bunch of crap to treat combustion by products. It only took 40 years, but recently the EPA actually revealed that air pollution in the eastern US has been significantly reduced, and the prevailing winds mean emissions from across the US eventually reach the east coast.
The issue was no really conscientous collaboration between unions, manufacturers and govt regulators and the cost was astronomical.
regards
mech
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