Longing for the Era of Economy Cars and Real Fuel Efficiency
More than 40 years ago, you could buy an economical car. No such cars are made today. Even the term economy car has passed out of general usage in favor of entry-level. It’s a subtle shift in the way cars are talked about that causes memories of the way cars were once made to fade away and — eventually — be forgotten altogether.
So let’s try to remember.
More than 40 years ago — in the early 1980s — every car company that was not a luxury car company made what were then commonly referred to as economy cars. They were made to be both inexpensive to buy and to drive. Today, there is very little that is inexpensive to buy.
In fact — as of the 2025 model year — there isn’t a single new car you can buy for less than $20,000. In part because there are very few cars left on the market that are even entry-level. The handful that were — models such as the Hyundai Accent and the Mitsubishi Mirage — have been taken off the market in favor of crossovers that cost thousands more — and that aren’t particularly inexpensive to drive, either.
As opposed to something like the 1982 Chevrolet Chevette diesel.
Laugh if you like. The joke’s on us.
The Chevette was inexpensive to buy. Its base price of $6,700 works out to just over $20k in today’s attenuated dollars. And it was extremely inexpensive to drive because its diesel engine enabled it to take you 40 miles — in city driving — on one gallon of fuel and 55 miles on the highway.
There are a handful of hybrids that can go that far — but they need to be hybridized to go that far. In other words, they need a tandem powertrain that includes an engine and an electric motor/battery pack paired with it, which is used to augment the power of the gas-burning engine and to take over for it when the system shuts the gas engine off. Which the system does as often as possible — as when the vehicle is stationary or coasting/decelerating.
This is how the hybrid delivers gas mileage comparable to what the 1982 Chevette diesel delivered.
The difference was that the Chevette didn’t need a tandem drivetrain. And — back then — diesel fuel cost less than gasoline, which effectively decreased the driving costs even more.
It is interesting to think about what kind of mileage might be possible today given 40-plus years of technical advances, most especially in terms of lightweight materials, low-rolling resistance tires, and so on.
If that is, it was feasible to manufacture a lightweight vehicle such as the Chevette — which weighed about 2,200 pounds — and to put a diesel engine in it. Such a car would probably be able to take you 50 miles in city driving and 60 or more on the highway.
Today’s hybrids do remarkably well given how heavy they are. A current-year Toyota Corolla hybrid, for instance, weighs more than 2,800 lbs. It still delivers 53 miles per gallon in city driving and 46 on the highway. (Hybrids get worse mileage on the highway because on the highway the engine is always running whereas in stop-and-go city driving, the hybrid system keeps the engine off often).
Imagine what the Corolla hybrid’s mileage might be if it weighed the same as — or less than — a 1982 Chevette.
There is no reason why it couldn’t, in terms of what is possible. The problem is government — which renders it impossible. A 1982 Chevette would be flamed as “unsafe” if that exact same car were offered new for sale today. Never mind that millions of people drove them every day for years and most never lost control or ran into anything — and if they did, it wasn’t the fault of the car.
A modern hybrid that weighed as little as a 1982 Chevette would probably be capable of better than 60 MPG in stop-and-go city driving and 50-plus on the highway. With a gas-burning engine.
But how would it do with a diesel engine?
Given that a diesel engine is generally about 20 percent more efficient, a diesel hybrid that weighed about the same as a 1982 Chevette would probably be capable of 70 MPG or even more than that.
This isn’t a hypothetical, either. VW — which used to specialize in economy cars — many of them diesel-powered — was developing an ultra-lightweight diesel-hybrid commuter car that was capable of traveling 100 miles or more on a gallon of diesel. This was right around the time — circa 2016 — when the government came down hard on VW for designing its diesel-powered cars to pass federal emissions certification tests. (READ MORE from Eric Peters: The Imminent Death of Volkswagen)
This was characterized as “cheating.”
Of a piece with the way Captain Kirk from Star Trek “cheated” the Kobayashi Maru test.
The government was not amused. But that’s not why VW was hammered by the government. Such “cheating” has been going on for as long as there has been testing. It’s been a game, up to now. It got serious — not because VW cheated but because it was threatening to reintroduce the economy car. In addition to the lineup of economical cars it had already introduced.
And the government can’t have that.
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