I LOVED!!! the model T! (model T or model A? I get the letters mixed up, but the one I like is the early one early 1920’s, with the funny shift)
Anyway, I like the model T mostly because I loved the way it shifted, with the clutch handle on the left to be used in combination with the gas pedal to change gears. The model T is all anyone really needs to drive around town, even to this day, and I am thinking about getting another one just to drive into town or to the neighbors. Driving it seems like a big adult-sized gocart. If I do buy one… I want to get a Model T with electric start and electric lights.
I seem to remember that the model T got around 25 miles a gallon? It was a very lightweight car (1000 pounds?), with just a small 4 cylinder engine and an old fashioned manual shift, so it had to get pretty good mileage.
No I am sure of the milage. My old 56 bug got 34 mpg. I always keep a log book in my cars. When ever I checked the milage I would use 3 to 4 tanks to calculate the milage. But both had a 36 hp engine. Then the gas companies strated playing with the formulas. Today you would be luck to get 29 after a rebuild on a bug. I had a 67 Giha with 1600 cc engine. Depending on the brand and time of year the numbers went between 13 to 26 mpg. This would be mid 70’s. I switched from Shell to Chevron and it held about 26.
My father’s 66 Chevelle gets around 17-20 mpg. Prior to being smog test exempt, the smog whatever modification (my mind just went blank there) pushed it down to 12 mpg.
not even that far back. my first car was an '87 Plymouth Turismo. It had a 2.2 liter engine with all of 84 hp. nowadays, you can’t find a car with a 2.2 liter gas engine with less than about 140 hp. I have to believe that a modern car of that weight with an 84 hp engine (probably about 1.2 liters) would be significantly more economical than the old bucket I had. 'course, regulatory requirements and customer expectations being what they are, you rarely see anything that light which isn’t A- or maybe B-segment.
MPGs of some of my old rides, best highway figures:
1963 Lark 259 V-8, 18-20
1966 VW bug best mpg, 29
1967 Malibu 350 powerglide, 15
1967 Caprice 327 powerglide, 18
1967 Dodge Dart 225 six, 24
1970 Maverick 200 6 cylinder, 20-22
1978 Chevette, 29
And the mpg champ- 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra Diesel (yep, it had all four labels on the trunk lid), 49-51 mpg highway, 42 city. I really miss that car.
True enough, but the misconception is thinking that because cars were very strong and armored years ago, they were somehow safer. They weren’t, to say the least.
Decades ago, a car could have a relatively minor crash in which the car had minimal damage, but the occupants were seriously injured or killed (and not just because there was no safety equipment). Today, even in a major collision, a car may have serious damage, but the occupants will hopefully escape major injury. After all, the energy from the collision has to go somewhere.
Cars today are strong where they need to be (to prevent intrusion into the passenger compartment), but intentially weak in other places (to absorb crash energy in so-called “crumple zones”).
When Ford introduced the Taurus in 1986, the standard engine was a 90 hp. four-cylinder. By 1992 the demand for the four was so small, the company dropped it entirely and the standard engine became a 140 hp. V-6.
I drive a 1962 Bel Air w/ no modifications. It gets 14mpg on the highway, about 16 in town. The 2-speed transmission shifts at about 25mph, so anything faster than that is just dumping more fuel into the carbs.
I collect digital scans of old advertisements as part of my online gallery of 35,000 or so artworks, and I have more than 1,500 old car adverts.
Some general impressions, not meant to a “cite”: during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s you can find some adverts here and there touting fuel economy, and directly post-war to the early 1950’s you see even more of them. By the mid-1950’s advertising for fuel economy dries up and you see advertising for comfort and power taking the lead. Handling also gets advertised a lot in the mid-late 1950’s, with people like Pontiac taking a “wider = better handling” approach in their adverts. In terms of advertising serious power, you have to wait until the mid-late 1960’s (early power-related adverts were more associated with “can you get the family roadster up the hill”, as opposed to “can you smoke the tires in 3rd gear”)
I had actually heard that small European cars (at least ones made for the European market), like the Ford Fiesta, are basically getting the same gas mileage now they got in the 1980s.
This is because although efficiency has increased, extra safety regulations mean their weight has also increased, and the two factors have canceled each other out.
That made me wonder about something. In Back to the Future II, there’s a scene where Marty suggests that the Delorean land atop Biff’s car as a way of crippling it. Doc responds by saying something like “He’s in a '46 Ford, we’re in a Delorean, he’ll crush us like a tin can.”
So how would a vehicle from the 40s and 50s hold up if it were to crash into a modern car?
I think that’s the Model A, per wiki the Model A was the first Ford to use the standard set of driver controls… The Model T didn’t even have a gas pedal, it had a throttle lever on the right of the steering column… and the driver had to manually control spark advance with a separate lever on the left.Cool Pic.
Low speed (5-10 mph,) better. Higher speed, probably much worse. You’d fare much worse too in an older car; you’d be crushed when the passenger compartment collapsed if not also impaled by the steering column.