Back in the ’80s, cars were downsized.
The Chrysler K-Car became the archetype of the new, government-designed kind of car. Small cars became “full-size” and front-wheel-drive, with four cylinder engines. In order to comply with federal edicts laying down how much gas they could burn.
Fast-forward 40 years.
There are very few cars left, because they got so small (the affordable ones, at any rate) that they had become useless as other-than-commuters. Crossovers – which are still mostly small but shaped differently, to allow more room inside – have largely replaced cars, with big trucks and SUVs remaining for the dwindling few who can afford the $50k-plus it takes to buy most of them.
But all of them are getting smaller under the hood – even the biggest (and heaviest) trucks and SUVs.
As an example of this strange phenomenon, have a look under the hood of the 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser (reviewed here) which returns after a three-year absence. It’s a bit smaller than it used to be and 800 pounds lighter – but it still weighs more than 5,000 pounds before the driver gets behind the wheel. With a driver and one passenger on board, this mid-sized SUV will weigh around 5,300-5,400 pounds, depending on the weight of the two people inside.
The previous Land Cruiser – last available in 2021 – weighed even more, even when it was empty. But it came standard with a 5.7 liter V8 engine. This was expected in a vehicle of this type, as recently as 2021.
The 2024 Land Cruiser comes standard with a 2.4 liter four cylinder engine. An engine that is less than half the size of the old Land Cruiser’s V8 engine.
The new four is augmented by a turbocharger and what is called a “mild hybrid” system that includes electric motors and an EV-like battery pack to store the electricity that powers those motors. All together, this combo can produce almost as much horsepower (and even more torque) than the V8 you can’t get anymore. It’s an impressive engineering achievement that enables Toyota to continue selling a vehicle like the new Land Cruiser with an engine.
Not a V8. But at least still an engine.
That matters to buyers who don’t want to drive a device that must be constantly planned around – because devices run out of charge and it takes comparatively forever to get them charged back up. If you can find a place to get it charged up when the device runs low. This latter being a major deterrent to potential buyers of SUVs and trucks, who often live in areas where places to charge are few and far between or not available at all. A device may have tremendous off-road chops but if you run out of charge in the woods, those “chops” are as useless as a sailboat in the desert.
That’s why Toyota did not convert the Land Cruiser into a device. It is why SUVs and trucks and even crossovers, generally, still come with engines. But they have gotten much smaller.
How much smaller can they get?
The 2024 Buick Envista I test drove (see here) earlier this year has a 1.2 liter three cylinder engine under its hood. I own a motorcycle with a larger four cylinder engine. A ’70s-era VW Beetle came with a 1.6 liter four cylinder engine and the Beetle of that era was a much smaller (and much lighter) car than the Envista, which is a compact-sized crossover that weighs almost twice as much as a ’70s Beetle.
You can buy a half-ton Chevy Silverado pickup with a 2.7 liter four cylinder engine. This tiny (for the size and weight of the truck) engine is, of course, heavily turbocharged to make up for the size it lacks.
Mid-sized luxury-brand sedans such as the current Mercedes E-Class and BMW 5 Series comes standard with 2.0 liter fours.
How much smaller must they get?
Bear in mind that this engine downsizing isn’t happening on account of buyer (market) demand. Just as the size of the average car didn’t decrease on account of what buyers wanted. The downsizing of both is a consequence of government’s demands. First, that cars use less gas; then – when the engineers figured out a way to do that and still make power (more than ever) – the government began to demand the now-extremely-efficient engines “emit” less of a gas that was previously not considered a pollutant.
Because it has nothing to do with pollution.
We all know the name of that gas.
And – end game – the only way to “clean it up” is by making engines smaller and smaller, so as to burn less and less gas, no matter how cleanly it is burned. That is why Toyota is putting four cylinder engines half the size of the V8s that used to come standard in 5,000-plus pound SUVs such as the Land Cruiser and Buick is putting motorcycle-sized three cylinder engines in vehicles such as the Envista that used to always come standard with at least a V6 as recently as ten years ago.
But engines will need to get even smaller still – in order to not “emit” too much of the gas that does not have anything to do with pollution.
Until there are no engines at all.
At which point, everything will be a device. And a device is all you’ll be allowed to buy.
. . .
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Saw a news story about Ford installing tattle-tale software. Please look into it.
Thanks, Ayn –
I will!
Sorry, my bad, it isn’t installed it is just patented.
It will report if anyone around you is speeding.
At the end of the day, the dildos couldn’t care less about the environment, or whether government edicts work or not. All that matters, is that they look and most importantly, FEEL good about what they’re doing. Hence why more and more of them are getting Teslas and other EVs en masse, DESPITE the (many) drawbacks. It’s all about image.
I went the opposite way.
6.6L L8T
Granted, it is used for towing, but I stayed out of the 1/2 ton market because they all have that cylinder shut off nonsense and smaller engines that will end up causing problems esp if you tow.
I’ll never get 35 mpg but engine shouldn’t blow up either because it’s too small for the workload.
We enjoyed our MB E350 V6. Went to get another one for the wife. I noticed the 4cy-T but didn’t say anything as she test drove it (yes honey, you have to test drive it……… I’m saying why).
During the test drive with the salesman (I sat in the back cause I wanted to see her reaction) she said ‘hey…..what wrong with this thing’ hahahahaha.
The salesman literally sighed………. “this is happening a lot now”
We walked, and bought a Grand Cherokee V8. And of course let the salesman and General Mngr know why were walking for what good it would do (at least they might bitch at MB at their sales meetings).
This the same girl who ended up buying the CT4 Blackwing after the GC V8, so she knows a little about what she wants in a powerplant. And she has driven a Tesla (just a neighbors) too and hated it.
“live in areas where places to charge are few and far between or not available at all.”
Part of the agenda….EV’s only….nowhere to charge them….no rural living…banned….
They say people are an invasive species, destroying the planet…EV’s are a step to…confine them to 15 min city/prisons…where they can be dealt with…
You nailed it. Even Trump is at least partially onboard with this Agenda 2030 scheme. His name for 15 Minute Cities is “Freedom Cities.” Cue up Janis Joplin: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Indeed, Anonymous1. Cattle-like people-are so much easier to slaughter when they are herded into smaller, tightly enclosed places. Nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. “Freedom Cities”? Yeah, I was never a Joplin fan, but her song line certainly rings true…
Those guys are just blowing smoke, or creating it by blowing stuff up to kingdom come. They’re fools who have gone to where angels fear to tread.
Nurse Ratchet to the rescue, drug them senseless, the only hope. Klaus in an induced coma will save the planet. Nurse Ratchet will do that first.
CO₂ is being consumed from the atmosphere from every tree, planted crops, grasses, weeds galore, can’t be stopped and it is futile to try. There is a Sitka spruce in Washington State that is over 200 feet tall. The coastal Redwoods in California just tower over the entire woods, you feel like you are in an enchanted forest when standing next to a Redwood tree, you are a dwarf in another world. A small seed of a Redwood tree is a great example of exponential growth.
Destroy all of the kelp beds in the oceans, they exhale oxygen too. That is bad, not good.
Grasses on the Great Plains are the toughest plants out there, for real. Free oxygen for you!
All the while, the plant kingdom is generating oxygen like there is no tomorrow.
O₂ is bad for everybody, keeps you alive, that’s not what the kooks want, an inconvenient truth.
Russian tanks on the move, fighter jets, drones, every military vehicle out there is using hydrocarbons. Israel is doing the same, doesn’t seem to bother them they are polluting the atmosphere with carbon emissions.
Trains move on rails to move more stuff for those guys.
Ukraine goes from bad to worse. Nice country you got there, wouldn’t want to see anything bad to happen to it.
Total hypocrites, tell you one thing then do another. Destruction from bombs doesn’t count, apparently.
The swine that they are don’t care if you live or die.
That’s life. That’s what people say.
Another round of insanity from our fearless leader, Jaydolf Dimslee! Math analysis is sorely lacking in this state but virtue signaling is in full bloom:
https://www.kuow.org/stories/charge-up-washington-state-launches-instant-rebate-program-for-electric-vehicles
Note there is no verification of income level for participants at the time of the transaction, just a sampling “later” so you better play nice! This from the state of WA that lost millions to scammers during the scamdemic give-a-way programs.
I wish this was a Babylon Bee parody but no, it’s the reality we live with here. Dimslee’s replacement for gov, “Sideshow” Bob Ferguson will be worse. There is no way a R candidate will win state office.
“They’re celebrating,” Inslee said. “That is the sound of freedom. Freedom from gasoline.”
‘Freedom from gasoline,’ barks the leftist activist Also known as ‘parked beside the road, immobile.’ FOOL.
Meanwhile, Chevron — founded as Standard Oil of California a century ago — is moving to Texas, for ‘freedom from leftists.’
Re: gasoline vs electricity
From the same NPR leftist news site, oh no’s, not enough juice for the future. I about fell off my recliner when they state “batteries” for storing wind energy! These are the same nitwits wanting to tear out the Snake River dams to save the salmon, never mind that eliminates 10% of our WA state electrical generation.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/demand-for-electricity-in-the-pacific-northwest-expected-to-jump-30
Net zero means sitting in a cave freezing to death….no fire allowed…no meat allowed…only eating insects allowed……
Slave abuse by the slave owners…6000 years of abuse….
Most people WANT to be slaves. No thinking required, much less allowed.
Hard to believe the same people who once thought this was the funniest thing they ever heard are now on the side of the Knights who say “Ni.”
ARTHUR: (wazzed stiff) Who are you?
TALL KNIGHT: We are the Knights Who Say “Ni”!
BEDEVERE: No! Not the Knights Who Say “Ni”!
TALL KNIGHT: The same!
TALL KNIGHT: The Knights Who Say “Ni”! demand a sacrifice.
ARTHUR: (to the TALL KNIGHT) Knights Who Say “Ni” … we are but simple travellers. We seek the Enchanter who lives beyond this wood and who …
TALL KNIGHT: NI!
ARTHUR: (recoiling) Oh!
TALL KNIGHT: NI! NI!
ARTHUR: (he cowers in fear) Oh!
TALL KNIGHT: We shall say Ni! again to you if you do not appease us.
ARTHUR: All right! What do you want?
TALL KNIGHT: We want … a shrubbery!
ARTHUR: A what?
TALL KNIGHT: Ni! Ni! Ni … Peng … Nee … Wum!
The PAGES rear and snort and rattle their coconuts.
ARTHUR: All right! All right! … No more, please. We will find you
a shrubbery …
TALL KNIGHT: You must return here with a shrubbery or else … you shall
not pass through this wood alive!
ARTHUR: Thanks you, Knights Who Say Ni! You are fair and just. We will
return with a shrubbery.
TALL KNIGHT: One that looks nice.
ARTHUR: Of course.
TALL KNIGHT: And not too expensive.
ARTHUR: Yes …
TALL KNIGHT: Now – go!
(later, after the knights say NI to the old woman and meet Roger the Shrubbier)
ARTHUR: Oh, Knights of Ni, here is your shrubbery. May we go now?
TALL KNIGHT: That is a good shrubbery. I like the laurels particularly –
But there is one small problem.
ARTHUR: What is that?
TALL KNIGHT: We are now no longer the Knights Who Say Ni! Therefore … we are no longer contractually bound by any agreements previously entered into by the Knights Who Say Ni! Therefore, we must give you a test, a Test to satisfy the Knights who say Neeeow … wum … ping!
ARTHUR: What is this test, Knights of N… (can’t say it)… Recently Knights of Ni!
TALL KNIGHT:Firstly. You must get us another shrubbery!
ARTHUR: Not another shrubbery –
TALL KNIGHT: When you have found the shrubbery, place the shrubbery here,
beside this shrubbery … only slightly higher, so you get a two-level effect with a path through the middle.
OTHER KNIGHTS:
A path! A little path for the late Knights of Ni!
Chorus of “Ni! Ni!”
TALL KNIGHT: When you have found the shrubbery, then you must cut
down the mightiest tree in the forest … with a herring.
ARTHUR: We shall do no such thing … let us pass!
TALL KNIGHT: Oh, please!
ARTHUR: Cut down a tree with a herring? It can’t be done!
OTHER KNIGHTS: (they all recoil in horror) Oh!
TALL KNIGHT: Don’t say that word.
ARTHUR: What word?
TALL KNIGHT: I cannot tell you. Suffice to say is one of the words the Knights of Ni! cannot hear!
Scene started out ridiculous enough. Make Arthur and the boys do a little landscaping before they can get on with their business. But give ’em an inch and they take a mile. If Detroit would have just said no to the Knights who say Ni maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. And better yet, if the press had pointed out the ridiculousness of the claims put forth by the greens instead of embracing them, well, maybe we’d still have decent low cost transportation.
“…the government began to demand the now-extremely-efficient engines “emit” less of a gas that was previously not considered a pollutant”
The end state, of course, is you and I are pollutants in need culling.
Seeing George Constanza in the shrinkage bit reminded me of Boomhauer from King of the Hill talking about Seinfeld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H11HKVw4U9k
I wonder how much throttle % is used on the test track, or if they ever use W.O.T.
The idea just came to me, much like VVT and the picture of half a civic becoming a whole civic,
the rediculous downsizing of displacement, why couldn’t they use cylinder deactivation tech and only turn on the full v8 at 80% throttle request? Maybe the cylinders deactivate if you haven’t used at least 80% throttle any time in the last minute.
Car companies are probablly very weary of the ways to defeat CAFE because they know the apperat would just re-write the rules and fine them.
It’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of they know all too well the government wants to make people plebs.
Can’t do that. Us “plebs” would end up deactivating the deactivation “feature”. Fewer physical cylinders ensures that we don’t have more engine than we’re allowed.
That is pretty bad, Eric, when your motorcycle has a better (I believe) engine than the Buick. The constant, ever-creeping downsizing (on all levels) is akin to boiling the frog slowly in hot water. And, like the frog, will American consumers even realize they have been forced out of their vehicles entirely by the time the water scalds them, and they realize they are walking everywhere? Meh, probably not, because if repeating history shows us, humans never learn. Not until it is too late to change what they detested, but did not hate enough (sadly) to fight back against when they had the power (and numbers) to change it.
The democrat young women (and tranny men) proabably think Thomas Crooks is their super hot dream boy of the century. He’s the most badass rifleman in the world, defies laws of physics, he was like totally invisible at the rally — (he’s a ghost), and he tried to take down the republicans and that Trump guy. They are probably gushing over him, he’s like their dream fantasy. They probably like his Fabio hairdo too. There’s probably young democrat girls that have a poster of him on their bedroom wall. He’s the poster boy for the young democrats.
The moron was a patsy. Betcha he never got a shot off. He barely got his rifle up on the roof.
The bullet supposedly caught on a urinalist camera was likely a passenger jet in the sky several miles away. An optical illusion they used to make a deity of him. It worked.
It takes a very high speed camera to catch a supersonic bullet in flight. The whole thing was a crappy very low quality, low cost skit. Remember his teleprompter speech? How he pulled his ‘bloody’ hand away from his ear. Video shows no such thing. Latest vid of him with Satanyahu shows the ear perfect…. not even a scab. Boy, do Americans love to be BS’ed!
The young girls of today have beautiful lesbian women posters on their bedroom walls. Real men no longer exist in this insane world. Many boys today are getting their tallywhackers whacked. Holes drilled. Drugs to grow breasts. Attending Sissy schools to learn how to behave like a girl in all ways.
Yeah, that bullet pic is probably fake. I personally believe Trump TRULY got hit by a bullet though. It makes sense the deep state would do that. Plus lots of other evidence.
Crooks probably had an airsoft rifle. They probably painted the orange tip black.