Friday, March 30, 2012

Good morning,

In the 1970s the price of gas was between 36 cents to a little under $1. It never exceeded $1 even during the infamous 1970s oil crisis.

That was the age of the American muscle cars. Big, powerful, 8 cylinder gas-guzzlers that delivered twice the horse-power than a driver would ever need on an American street. But why not when you can fill your tank up for 14 bucks and nobody had ever heard of global warming?

Now look at 2012. The price of gas is over $4 in many states and environmental restrictions are strict. The market has responded accordingly.

U.S. automakers say new cars with three-cylinder engines can give better gas mileage with the same power as the four-cylinder compact sedans Americans buy now. The cars can get 40 miles-per-gallon in traffic and 50 on the highway, and they're not expensive hybrids nor do they need any special fuels, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Please scroll down for more!

Thanks for reading,

Your Living Green editor

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Ford Motor Co. said it will have a three-cylinder Focus or Fiesta for sale in the United States by the middle of next year. "This engine is a game-changer," Steve Cropley of the British publication Autocar said of the three-cylinder Focus that just went on sale in Europe. "You barely hear the thing start, and it idles so smoothly you'd swear it had stalled. "Japanese makers Mitsubishi and Nissan and Germany's BMW and Volkswagen are all said to be working on three-cylinder designs. Any vehicles with such small engines must be sure "not to compromise performance or fuel economy," to attract U.S. buyers, Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with IHS Automotive, said. Manufacturers have been encouraged by how quickly Americans have been willing to move from large power plants down to four-cylinder models. Forty-seven percent of the cars sold last year had four cylinders, auto survey company Edmunds.com said. "Three cylinders shouldn't be much of a stretch," Dave Sullivan of automotive consulting firm Auto-Pacific Inc., said.