This is something hard to digest. I mean how can old cars which dates back to 1992 be more cleaner??? If the older cars were less polluting why are the car companies giving importance in inventing more fuel efficient, cost efficient and eco friendly cars?
The emissions testing shows maximum allowable scores, the average scores of cars that passed, and the scores for the car tested.
Not only did our 1990 car pass all tests, but it scored about 1/3 as high as the average passing score. (As for total carbon emissions, we only drive it about 3000km per year, vastly less than the 16,000km average.)
I'd heard a lot of bs about older cars like this one being 16 or 19 times as polluting as newer cars. The only way that could be true is if the maximum allowable scores are 16 or 19 times as high for old cars as for newer ones. I checked and found cars like ours (but not OURS) get scores a little higher than new cars similar to it. Not 16-19 times as high, but, say, 15% higher.
This also makes sense in that our car gets mileage very similar to newer cars of similar size and weight.
My peeve is not against the emissions testing itself. I'm sure it helps keep the worst polluting cars off the roads. Although it peeves me that I have this annual expense and hassle because some people are too stupid to keep their cars in proper shape.
My peeve is against the costly government programs to get older cars off the road, using the false claim that they pollute 16-19 times as much as newer cars. If the older cars were evaluated at, say, 20% worse, and based on mileage driven, those programs would be shown to be a huge waste of money. Better to spend a bit of it to upgrade the power plants in perfectly good older cars. That would save the embedded energy needed to build new cars and employ a lot of mechanics. Why should I be able to get $3000 to buy a new car, but not a dime if I spend $1500 for new heads to clean up my car's engine?
Crushing perfectly good old cars makes us poorer. You don't create wealth by wasting.
The reason why newer cars aren't hugely more efficient is that pushing a certain frontal area through the air at certain speed takes a certain amount of energy. The internal combustion engine wastes most of its fuel's energy in the form of heat, and nothing much has been done about that for a long time.
It's just hard to improve mileage on a reasonably streamlined 2800lb sedan with fuel injection, lockup 4-spd automatic, intact emissions components such as a good catalytic converter, perfect alignment and properly inflated tires. Like our Spirit.
Newer technology saved weight in some aspects, but weight was added for crashworthiness, sound insulation, and additional features. People just bought large suv's (with superfluous 4x4 drivetrains) instead of large sedans.