The Future

[CMF_Family Hack]

Well with Hack about to leave my family( wipes tear from eye) and we are not that far away from about 3 years in Vietnam my thoughts are what cars will dominate the market in 2010/11.What will we return to? Petrol prices around $2.00/litre, diesel car sales going through the roof and demand for small frugal petrol cars also.
The traditional Holden/Ford family car a thing of the past and only ones driving around in gas guzzling cars will be the mega rich. As with conservation of water being seen in a gas guzzler will also become a social issue.
So I will watch with interest what happens over the next 3/4 years and I bet on return chances are we will be buying a diesel car or a petrol one that has excellent fuel economy. As always a balnce between consumption/ performance
but performace can be achieved without high petrol consumtion.Car makers will be paying a lot more attention to power to weight ratios instead of just building bigger capacity motors. Well Japanese/European car makers. I think the Americans have yet to realise that they do not have a God given right to cheap petrol.
Anyway those are my predictions not so far down the track.Cars like the Micra will hip.

 

[CMF_Family Hack]

Last sentence should read "Cars like the Micra will be hip" Maybe a very old saying but means will be in fashion, cool to be seen in, doing right thing by limiting oil consumption etc, etc.

 

[CMF_mipcar]

Whatever you get, don't buy European. I was chatting to a guy today he owns a Citroen C5 (I think). Anyway he has owned others before so must like them. His current one is a Turbo diesel.

BUT, get this... His 50,000k service cost,,, $2,000.
Apparently this is not an uncommon cost with the new Euro cars.

Mychael

 

[CMF_fred]

any thoughts on e85 cars, hack?

 

[CMF_Gareth]

Hack,

What are the chances the first car you look for upon your return will be a K11.

 

[CMF_Family Hack]

Spot on Gareth.Still have dreams about doing a K11 up on return. I think I will wait until about 1 year before we return and then purchase one and do a rebuild with a few "enchancements".
Lucky I have mates like my mechanic in Tassie Laurie Williams and if I rang him and said do a Family Hack job he could do it with his eyes closed.
Find a Micra with a straight body maybe a respray,but a low kl motor, maybe beef up the internals and the rest is history.

 

[cisco]

Sounds pretty accurate Hack. I love it how the smarter, considerate drivers have always preferred smaller, efficient cars.. But only when things get more expensive and force everyone else to go that way, do all the average boneheads join in "because they have to".

There should be extra tax/fuel costs for large cars, simply because "you don't need one" = luxury.

One of the big current reasons so many people drive guzzling cars is because they have leased/claimed the entire car as a work expense. This means that they effectively get their petrol for almost half price, as well as all car associated costs e.g. servicing etc. So paying half of say the petrol bill for a brand new commodore, really isn't too much, hence still so many large cars around. We need some tweaking of the rules to make this trickier or not so attractive.. If they do an environmental policy overhaul, this should be part of the initiative.

 

[CMF_Brendon]

in the paper the other day i read the government has put out 2.5 million dollars to make there car fleet more green friendly. so i think they will be downsizing a lot engine size wise to more economical.

 

[CMF_Geoff W]

Why doesn't the government take advantage of it's own LPG conversion initiative? Then they can see what a joke a dual fuel vehicle is. Underpowered to blazes, unreliable etc.
There should be more pressure put on car companies to bring out factory gas only cars. This is one thing that the falcon has had for quite a few years now as an option. But the prices should be more attractive to steer the consumer away from the big banger petrol powered market.

From a performance viewpoint, there can be great results from gas only built engines. With companies like Gas Research Australia leading the way with 'Gas Injectors' for the Big V8 market and full multi throttle setups. I have also read about a Datsun 1600 with the SR20DET conversion running gas only and still making around the 300kW mark. An excellent example. Keep in mind the engine still has to be built with Forged Pistons and Hardened valve seats etc to handle the extra compression needed to compress the LPG.

A few cents worth