[Red2014SS]

Originally Posted by hockeylover86

The key is AVERAGE. This is the reason you are seeing pickups starting to evolve getting lighter, smaller turbo engines, small diesels, etc.. These are the high volume units.

Cars like the Hellcat are not high volume so they don't contribute much to the average and can continue to exist provided they sell well.

That's the contradiction. You said, "Cars like the Hellcat are not high volume, but they can exist as long as they sell well"? Well, the more they sell, the more it impacts the fleet average fuel economy. Popularity will kill them. Yet, if they don't sell many, their is no incentive to produce them. The solution? Well, for Chevrolet, it's the 4 cylinder Camaro.

Super Chevy just wrote an article praising the 4-cyl turbo Camaro. Why? That 4-cyl engine, if it sells well, will allow GM to continue producing the V8 ... at least for a little while.

Taken from this months Super Chevy magazine -
"Every car sold figures into the average for the manufacturer. The way the law works, is that all vehicles produced by the auto maker have their EPA mileage numbers averaged into a single number by a complex mathematical formula. That number must meet or exceed a federally set CAFE standard. If the company's CAFE is less than average, they are forced to pay a hefty fine to the tune of $5.50 per .1 mpg" ..

That's for EVERY vehicle they sell. It doesn't matter how well the Hellcat sells. They need to lower MPG for the entire fleet to make the cut on these new standards. If a manufacturer fails to meet the standard, for every .1 mpg under, per 1 million cars - the fine is $5.5 million dollars! They miss by 1 mpg, it's $55 million! In the big picture, cars like the Hellcat are fun, but they are small potatoes. Fiat/Chrysler makes their money selling pickup trucks and econo boxes. If one or the other has to disappear, say goodbye to the Hellcat engine.