Do we really need all that safety stuff?

[Hersbird]

I think if the Elio is ever built you will see a push a few years down the road to reclassify them as cars and boom, they will gone again. They can't make that as a car under our regulations. I just hope right now some plant in China is also putting together their version of an inclosed 3 wheel motorcycle people can import and skirt us regulations. That is the key. I wonder of I bought a container of Datsun Gos with one wheel removed I could get a pass?
$5000 cars are not a dream if they exist. They are only a dream in the US because they are against the law.

[duncan]

The other side of the argument is - what are you allowed to sell?

Are you allowed to sell rotten meat?

If you could sell food without having to go through all those unnecessary procedures like maintaining clean facilities and washing your hands you could reduce prices!!

That would drive the clean manufactures out of business

With cars because the regulations require the safety gear it is made in vast volumes so that I can take my family in a safe car for an extra $100 in cost
If the safety gear wasn't made in those volumes it would cost $100,000 extra

[RedDevil]

Niky has bashed that $5000 car dream with solid arguments, and so have I.

The USA is the one big market that does not have an abundance of really small cars.
Europe does. We know what we are talking about.
Our small cars are more expensive than that, even those on the ragged low edge which almost nobody wants.
People gladly pay one or two grand more for A/C and a slightly bigger engine, alloys, metallic, anything to make it 'acceptable'.

Chances are, if you lived over here and have actually driven a score of them, you would too.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by Hersbird

They are only a dream in the US because they are against the law.

If you can get enough people to turn out and vote in agreement with you .. the law gets changed.

Given that most elections only see around ~1/3 eligible voter turn out ... you need less than 1/6 of the eligible voters to vote in agreement with you to get the laws changed via electing any representative you want (including yourself) who shares your law changing PoV.

If you can't even get 1/6 .. ~17% of eligible voters to turn out , agree with , and vote your way ... well .. welcome to the minority

[nimblemotors]

Would you want to drive this truck to save $1000?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D827IxEJVS4

[jcp123]

I would definitely buy what most consider a penalty box. I kind of do already - as beat down as my Echo is.

800-1000ccs, manual trans and four seats. I don't need ac, heat, radio, carpets, power anything...If the Tata Nano weren't so darn ugly, it'd be perfect.

Heck, my dream car is a hot rod, if that give anyone any idea of how low my standards are.

[Hersbird]

So I guess I give up $5000 cars don't exist. It's like the moon landing, faked in some Hollywood studio. Dang.

Seems if Animal Planet did a series called "Finding $5000 Car" it would go on week after week with people making funny honking noises in mall and freeways, interviewing witnesses, and turning up; nothing... until one day they do "Finding $5000 Car International" and suddenly it's more real then killer Yetis in Russia.

Glad to see hope is still alive out there for our political system actually getting results based on voting. So say there were two massive, groundswell, wave midterm elections in a row. I just saying hypothetically, somewhere on another planet, certainly not in the USA in 2010 and 2014. Then things would really start to happen right?

Also funny all the people bashing these Indian cars are in love with the Elio over on it's thread. 3 wheels good, 4 wheels bad, got it. Lets just drive that Elio into a 40 mph offset crash barrier and see what it looks like. I think I could put 100,000 miles on some of these cars and never even reach 40 mph once. But your right, it's crazy talk to even let me try. I guess I can get back on my 430 pound motorcycle where I'm really safe sliding around on oil and gravel hardly seen by the average driver.

Actually all this talk has given me another idea. I was reading the US import laws that make it illegal to import these cars (if they did exist which apparently they clearly do not) and I saw where maybe for off-road use they would be ok. That got me thinking of building an awesome go-cart track using only off the shelf Indian cars. How fun would that be? I'd call it the "Jaipur Experience", no passport or airline tickets required! I might use Duncan's idea above with the rotted meat because it seems montezuma's revenge while driving would be an important part of the Jaipur Experience. Maybe I can also work elephants into it now that Ringling Brothers isn't using them.

[niky]

I've driven one of those Chinese three wheelers. A quite relaxing way to spend an entire afternoon going as far as you could in thirty minutes in a regular car.

The biggest problem with those is not the size, but the quality. To meet the ultra-low price requirements, they're built as badly as possible, and tend not to last long under abuse.

-

I'd actually feel safer in an Elio than a Nano. For one, it's designed for higher speeds... meaning more tracking stability, better brakes and better crash safety (Paul claims it'll ace the offset frontal... the Nano won't pass any crash test on Earth). Also, less likely to spontaneously combust, I'd think.

Originally Posted by Hersbird

$5000 cars are not a dream if they exist. They are only a dream in the US because they are against the law.

Look up "street-legal" UTVs.

It is very possible to legalize a four-wheeled four-seat vehicle that doesn't meet any safety regulations with turn signals and a horn, depending on where you live.

Unfortunately, these are still specialty products, selling in the $6 - $12k range. Which is as low as you can get without mass manufacture... You need to sell in Corolla numbers to get into the $4k range with a 1,000cc motor.

Still, UTVs don't need to meet safety requirements, and they can weigh up to 2,000 lbs! But thanks to popular demand, they've gotten a free pass.

OHV Registration, non resident permits and street legal | Utah State Parks
(Note... the law doesn't prohibit aero-modding. Hmmm...)

If enough of you vote for it, you could create a "highway-legal quadricycle" classification in your State, giving small four-wheelers a free pass on safety as four-wheeled motorcycles. But these cars would have to be capable of reaching 65 mph rather than the 45 mph UTVs do.

(Tricycles will never lose that free pass. To change regulations for three-wheelers would mean looking at motorcycle laws more closely. That would kill the motorcycle market.)

Originally Posted by duncan

Are you allowed to sell rotten meat?

You'd be surprised how many people would actually buy that.

As with minimum wage laws... these things are easily sidestepped by people desperate enough to accept less than the law thinks they should settle for.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by Hersbird

Actually all this talk has given me another idea. I was reading the US import laws that make it illegal to import these cars (if they did exist which apparently they clearly do not) and I saw where maybe for off-road use they would be ok.

You can also perpetually re-file the paper work for a short term import exception .. claiming you are working on making the foreign vehicle US compliant.

I've met two people in my lifetime .. who drive around Foreign cars for several years that way .. they just kept re-filing .. and re-filling .. of course .. if the re-file is ever denied .. than legally you can't drive on public roads .. but you can still drive plenty of other places .. and even if you happen to be driving on public roads illegally .. you'd still have to get caught , before any kind of punishment.

- - - -

Or ...

Kit-Cars ... have a much much lower safety standard to get a DMV rubber stamp to legally be on the road.

Soooo

Import that foreign car in separate 'pieces' , and shipments ... Labeled for customs .. not as a car ... but as parts .. engine , bumper , etc ... thus getting all the parts into the country ... than you assemble the pieces here under far more permissible US Kit-Car laws.

Allot of Hassle .. sure .. but it's a loop hole to get any of those foreign cars you want legally on the road in the US.

Best of Luck ... please post pictures of your new kit-car project

[RedDevil]

Most of the 'luxury'stuff that gets built into modern cars is so cheap to buy for the manufacturer that it is easier to fit them in every car on the production line than to add a selection mechanism to be able to skip it for the few % of beater cars on that line.

A/C is the exception; that is even pricey per unit for the manufacturer, like maybe $200.

But A/C can actually make you drive more economically.
If your alternative is to crank the windows down on the highway you'd probably lose more on added aero drag than the A/C would have cost you.

And in these cold an damp mornings, I can start driving right away; the A/C defogs the windows almost immediately.
In my first few A/C less cars I needed to stop and wipe the inside regularly, until they were decently warmed up.

I use A/C to save fuel, like only when I can save fuel by using it.
I would not want to miss it.

My Nissan Almera could not be bought without A/C, one of the few cars in that segment at the time to have A/C as standard.
They had to.
It had the tendency to fog up badly and I needed the A/C at least half the time.
Nissan could have redesigned the ventilation system but they chose to cheap out and put A/C in every car.