Quote:
Originally Posted by Martinjlm
CAFE.
Remember the Ford Probe? A little FWD coupe? That was shockingly close to becoming a Mustang replacement. Before you hurt yourself laughing at that, remember the Chevy Beretta? A little FWD coupe? Was almost Camaro replacement. And who could forget the K-Car? All FWD. All reactions to the early CAFE rules.
On a more positive note, those rules drove a lot of invention.
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Being over 50 and a car guy I remember the Beretta and Ford Probe and how it came out in one of the mag's maybe Road and Track in 86-88 on how this was the new Mustang. It was a huge outcry at the time so Ford continued with the Fox body longer than planned, not sure about the Beretta though but working at a GM dealer I had access to all the GM Cars at the time. I drove everything that GM made from 88 to 91 and the only things that I wanted were a ZR1 vette and 350 Iroc.
I did try and get the 89 or 90 Iroc but the price was over 30K Canadian for the Camaro so ended up getting the Mustang.
GM jumped on the FWD bandwagon and drank the cool-aid, they did not need to go to the level that they did, that set the path for GM's downward trend. Olds was number 2 or 3 for GM with over a Million cars and 4 years later it was selling less that Mercury (or close to that) Im more of an Olds person than Chevy so my interest mostly is in Olds Cutlass but Monte and Camaro would be my next interest.
In Canada we have always paid more for fuel than the US so there has been interest in fuel mileage, we are now paying 5 to 6 a US gallon I would think that is what they are paying in Europe, but we still buy a lot of V8 engines.
To fill up my 17 Ram I am paying 175$ right now, I would think that it would cost 65 in the US.