The Oil Crisis of the 1970's - {CLOSED}

[titleguy1]

In 1973, the oil crisis hit. Suddenly: Every car made seemed completely irrelevant; gas guzzlers, or too fast to handle, or too big, too loud; every car had the problem. Except for a select few, and the halo child being the Honda Civic. What your companies must do, then is have one of two options; either replace the engine of an existing car, or engineer a completely new one altogether.

Please, if you don't have the steam version of the game, use vanilla parts only. Only your latest build please.

---Regulations---

Trim Tech year 1976 - Model may be of different year to simulate an earlier release date.
Cars can only run on unleaded fuel.
Catalytic converters required.
One can only submit one entry, but 2 styles of car: 3/5 door hatchback or 4 door saloon.
Maximum engine emissions: 2000.
Not really a regulation, but if you want to succeed, try not to make irrational decisions.

REMEMBER: If the rule isn't listed, it's not a rule!

--Scoring---
High importance - Reliability, Price, Fuel economy.
Medium importance -Safety, Drivability.
Lesser importance - Sportiness, Prestige, Emissions.
Slight importance - Power (Acceleration times).

The deadline is January 15th. Maximum of 15 entries.
Amount of sent entries: 18.

[Manche]

I already have a medium car for this thing "crack knuckles" BRING IT ON!

[koolkei]

any cars right? like we can take even someone else's and modify them?

[titleguy1]

No, it should be in your own company.

Don't make any cars yet, I'm still discussing the rules.

[BlastersPewPew]

I would also take emissions into account as well, the mid '70s were a time of tightening regulations for emissions and these should be enforced as well. Maybe under Medium Importance.

[Oskiinus]

Can it be a entry-level sedan?

[ArnRno]

If we're taking emissions into account then I say all but mandate a cat in the exhaust system - make the emissions threshold low enough that a cat-less car is possible, but it'll be a tough road to go, like the CVCC Honda used was clean enough that cats weren't really necessary.

I love cars from this era, this will be a fun challenge. Cannot wait.

Oh! Titleguy! What if you widen the field? Plenty of different types of cars were sold in 1976, not just the Civic, and while I know you didn't say we could only build those, I'd love to see like a competition within a competition, small hatches compete against small hatches, but hey, Cadillac still put out some big guys in 76, so did Chrysler, etc. I hope we see some big, slow, horrible neutered land yachts.

[titleguy1]

I had planned to have 2 spreadsheets, one for compact cars, one for large sedans.

Cats will be required, thank you for the idea.

[ArnRno]

Another thing to add - does it have to be a four-door sedan? Remember, there was a Coupe Deville, and a Sedan Deville. Ford LTDs were in two door trim, too, so were Impalas, etc. Two doors, but still like 4000 lbs and six seats.

I know we really don't have a lot of big 70s cars, no biiiig 70s two-doors I can think of off the top of my head at work, but I just have to say something about it.

[titleguy1]

Well, I want to keep effort on my part to a minimum, since the saloon shootout at 25 entries was way more than I'd expect. I think I can expand to 2-door coupes, but they will in turn be scored the same way as sedans.

[ArnRno]

Eh, calling them "coupes" anyway is a bit of a stretch, they're just 2-door sedans/saloons.

[KLinardo]

I would suggest swapping prestige and power. There was no power in the late 70s due to swapping from SAE Gross to SAE Net and the complete lack of compression in a futile attempt to build land barges that still made decent fuel economy. However, having a nice car, for a status symbol or otherwise, was much more important to consumers than their 0-60 times IMHO.

Edit: changed "decent power" to "decent fuel economy"

[ArnRno]

Kyle (it's Kyle, right?) isn't wrong about that dynamic there. Big Buicks and Mercurys were pushing 8L of engine to hit like 170ish horsepower, but goddamn were they well appointed (for the time anyway).

[KLinardo]

Yes, it is Kyle.

You're a little off on your displacement number there. The biggest Ford engine dropped into a car was the 460 CI (~7.5L). I'm not a GM guy, but I think the big Buicks only got the 454 CI V8 which was just under 7.5L. Now, the big Caddies got the 500 CI monstrosity which did tip the scales at a whopping 8.2L which means that each cylinder displaced 1.025L. A 1976 Ford 460 CI V8 produced 202 HP and 352 Ft-Lbs of torque on paper with a compression ratio of 8.0:1 which was way down from the all time high of 11.3:1 in a Super Cobra Jet in 1971 that made 390 HP and 450 Ft-Lbs. of torque. Those '71 HP numbers were underrated for insurance purposes of course.

[ArnRno]

I consider 7.5 liters to be "pushing 8L," just saying.
Ford (Mercury/Lincoln, technically) did put some 462 inch motors into cars, but we're talking late 60s there, and Wildcats, LeSabres, and Rivs used the 455 before they went to BOP 350 motors, and then eventually to Chevrolet 350s - big BOP cars never got big-block Chevrolet motors - but '76 would have definetely been 455 BOP stuff, after that it was weird things like 307 Chevy, or an Olds 403, or the 350 Olds Diesel. A lot of them started going to the Buick V6s, too, like the 3.8... forgot what that was in inches... They just stopped caring about speed (just like you said) and just went for trying to pass emissions and CAFE. 1976 would have been the last year for the 500 Caddy, too, and a quick look up gives it a rating of.... 190 horse, which is... well, make your own opinions - I think it's plenty, but I'll admit it's a far cry from the 400 it was underrated at in 1970.

I might know too much about this era - these cars are the cool ones to me, I never got into that muscle car crap (no offense) that a lot of you guys are into.... Well, not since I was like eight .

EDIT: Titleguy, sorry, I went off topic.