irresistibo

What is the deal with emissions regulations? What do they base these on? If im guessing correct, a 6 liter SUV will probably produce alot more than a high powered sports car, and yet we cant really get the most out of sports car engines, but SUV's can smog up the air without any penalty? This doesnt make sense to me. Can someone please explain why this is the case. Will the US government ever get the emissions laws correct?

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fuz

Maybe we can convince the government that the RX-8 is an SUV. It sure looks like one... if you squint... and sniff some glue.

Rich

I'm far from an expert, so don't take what I say here to be the absolute truth. I'm fairly certain it's true for fuel economy, but not as sure for emissions.

I believe the reason is that decades ago trucks were subject to much less stringent emissions and fuel economy regulations since they were "work vehicles". In other words, the only people who used them were people who needed them for their jobs. The government didn't want to subject those workers to higher costs and hurt the economy, so they were exempted from those restrictions. Also, there were far fewer trucks on the roads, so they didn't have a huge impact.

Fast forward to today, and now SUVs are built on truck platforms, and are therefore subject to the laws regarding trucks. They can't **** off the SUV drivers becuase of their votes, so we're stuck with the current situation.

Grimace

Starting soon (2 years I think), SUV's will be held to the same emissions standards as passenger cars. Legislation just passed.

Sputnik

I believe that they are working on that in the U.S. also (unless that's where Grimace was referring to). But the fact that the SUVs have only had to have been held to lesser truck standards, they have "gotten away" with alot, like emissions, crash standards, interior safety standards, etc. etc. etc.

The government being slow to react, is taking awhile to catch these things up.

---jps

tribal azn

how about high powered sports cars? how come cars like the corvette, viper, lambos, ferriars, etc are allowed here, yet v6's like the skyline and even 4 cylinders like the japanese sti arent allowed here because of emissions regulations? i would think that those 4 and 6 cylinder cars would produce a hell of alot less emissions then v8s and v10's.

Grimace

Japan didn't have any interest in federalizing the Skyline, and didn't think there would be a market here. Subaru is only now considering bringing the STi here, but no concrete plans have been made. I don't think it has anything to do with emissions. If it did, it would be easy to make them pass (new catalytic converter, different tune, etc.) but look at what the average american buys, and you can see why we don't get the cools cars Japan and Europe gets. Very little market.

By the way, in my post above, I was talking about Canada's emissions regulations being tightened on SUV's. US will probably never pass it, there is simply too much opposition.

Sputnik

JDM engines don't only lack the same cats, but they also normally lack EGRs, and other minor but effective emissions items. So if a USDM version of an engine wasn't made, you'd have to add all of that stuff to get it past emissions testing.

And frankly, that is one of the main reasons why a JDM version of an engine puts out a little more power than the USDM version. Yet people still bring the engines over, thinkin' that they're getting a stronger engine, and then have all sorts of problems getting it past emissions

---jps