One of the greatest benefits of modern engineering and technology is that today’s cars and trucks enjoy both great fuel economy and power. If you’re careful enough, you can even hit around 30 mpg with a modern pickup truck. However, in decades past, the engines in large American cars weren’t exactly known for frugality.
Today, Lewin wrote about the really cool dial found on the mirrors of the 1979 Lincoln Mark. In that article, Lewin attached a photo of the brochure, which shows GM’s MPG Sentinel claiming 18.3 MPG. But how? Ah yes, Alan Christensen knows:
The 18.3 reading on the Cadillac MPG Sentinel was, of course, with the engine turned off.
The Autopian‘s resident wrenching hero, Stephen Walter Gossin, is back! His latest escapade is rescuing our terrible Nissan NV200 taxi project, which you can read about here. It’s heartwarming to read all of the “Notorious SWG” love in our comments. Here’s one from AJ:
This song is called SWG’s Restaurant, and it’s about SWG, and the restaurant, but SWG’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song SWG’s Restaurant.
Now it all started this past Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to eat haggis at an Irish pub restaurant for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, but SWG doesn’t live in the restaurant, he lives in the evil lair nearby the restaurant. And livin’ in the evil lair like that, he’s got a lot of room for hoopties where the lawn used to be in. Havin’ all that room, he they decided that he had room for whatever Hardigree wanted to send him.
Hardigree had an NYC cab delivered right on Thanksgiving, so SWG left the restaurant, got to the lair, found the apathetic delivery guys in there, and decided it’d be a friendly gesture to take the NYC cab down the ramp. So he took the half a ton of vehicle, took shovels and rakes and Titans and chains and implements of destruction and headed on toward the car transport vehicle.
That’s what we did. We lowered that NYC cab, as gently as was possible, and then shoved it in behind the other vehicles. Then we drove back to the restaurant, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the next morning, when … to be continued.
You can get anything you want, at SWG’s Restuarant (exceptin’ SWG)…
Finally, we stop at Mark’s Shitbox Showdown, where MaximillianMeen gives amusing advice on the vehicle to pick for your next zombie apocalypse:
Anyone picking the dooley is gonna wind up dead meat in a week. Look at how many zombies can climb into the bed and hang off the running boards. They’swarm all over that thing and be fighting each other for brain matter leftovers in seconds.
The van on the other hand, no running boards for the undead to stand on, no bed to hide in and jump out at you as you approach. Plus internal access to the engine allows you to wrench from within the locked interior. Shorter wheelbase will be far more manuverable and you won’t high-center on the first RR tracks you cross.
No contest. Come with me in the van if you want to live!
Have a great evening, everyone!
I had a 1981 Coupe DeVille with the 368ci engine. It had variable displacement, could run 4, 6 or 8 cylinders based on the load. I think it was only 1981 that had it. I could get an average of 17-18mpg on a tank with 14in rims. If you disconnected the system it would get around 13mpg! They only did it the one year because they couldn’t get all the vibrations out of six-cylinder mode.
The infamous “Cadillac 8-6-4”.
The biggest issue was the computer chip they had to control it. It couldn’t keep up with real-world use, and never knew what mode to put the engine into. Also, the rocker control system wasn’t quick enough to respond to the driver’s right foot in a timely manner, whether accelerating or decelerating, which lead to delays in power production that made the engine impossible to drive smoothly.
The deactivation and fuel injection systems crossed wires to the point where neither really knew what state the motor was in, which meant that the throttle-body was either sending too much or not enough fuel into the motor for the number of cylinders that were actually in use.
Certain cruising speeds would even throw the processor into a tizzy where it would hunt between cylinder counts, going back and forth like an automatic transmission that couldn’t quite select the proper gear for the situation at hand.
I thought the Ioniq 5 was more CUV than hot hatch but apparently it’s just a little bigger than a GTI.
My 2 car garage! You notice the size difference between the 2. It’s like a 25% fluffier car.
I would avoid Cadillacs of that era for a good reason. 80s was terrible…90s and 00s were improved slightly, and 10s-20s are alright but MUCH better than the 80s…
If one absolutely must own plush GM malaise, you’re almost always better off with a Buick or Oldsmobile.
I see…
It was when they switched to the 4100 series motors in 1983, I think. That’s when they went downhill.
Not just that motor. The V8-6-4, the 350 Diesel were all garbage…
My 368 8-6-4 was great. If it got annoying I just disconnected the plug. Then it was just a regular v8. Then when gas went up plug it back in.
I heard of one 368 (probably more) that hit a million.
Every once in a while you see someone pulls a small block car out of a field somewhere and gets 16mpg to 18mpg hard to believe. Probably all flat highway driving with an two barrel.
Any Arlo Guthrie reference is an immediate win. Congrats!
I had an Eldo of that era, with the lovely HT4100, that I picked up to fix and sell. Like most of the cars I used to buy to sell I used it as a mostly daily driver for a while. 18.3 is very realistic for mixed driving.
Fill the tank at the top of Loveland Pass
Feather the throttle all the way to Denver
???
Profit!
I once took my old 5MT Passat, fully loaded with passengers, from the top of Mt. Mitchell NC all the way down into Asheville, which is a nearly unbroken descent from 6,700′ to about 2,000′. I used engine braking for almost the entire ride down, which is about 45 minutes to an hour.
Not only did we get about 80mpg, but the engine braking (in most modern cars) turns the injectors off, so I also go to see the water temp gauge go DOWN to nearly cold start levels before we made it back to town. That’s the only time I was ever able to pull that off, including trying it in rental cars in CO and UT.
Maybe in Georgetown. No gas on Loveland Pass.
Wow, my first COTD! Thank you! Can you imagine fifty people a day, I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of SWG’s Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement!
Well deserved.
Any day I hear Arlo strumming in my head is a good day.
“Anyone picking the dooley is gonna wind up dead meat in a week”
That Dooley would be much easier to turn into a technical. Nothing gets rid of zombies faster than a belt fed machine gun mounted on the back,
My zombie apocalypse car would be a late 2000s Toyota Yaris. Not much to grab onto and anyone thinking fuel would be cheap in such a scenario hasn’t thought things through enough.
You’ll be better off with an old IDI diesel that can run on cooking oil or whatever might still be in the giant fuel tanks of an abandoned airports, aircraft, rail yards, locomotives, semis, truck stops, shipping terminals, ships or military bases.
Toecutter’s aerobike thing – no gas, enclosed, and you just have to be faster than a shuffling horde
Toecutter’s bike thing is the real autopian answer
If you really want to save yourself in a zombie apocalypse, a decent size sailboat is safest bet. Everyone knows zombies can’t swim. Unless it is a Minecraft zombie, in which case the zombies turn into drowneds and then throw those damn tridents at you.
You’re gonna get hop-ons.
Like the train thru Calcutta.