Steve
Interesting because as I remember it there were few emmission controls in Europe until catalytic convertors became mandatory some time around 1989-90. Before this we had a decade of 'lean burn' engines which were surprisingly economical, especially as during this time fuel injection became dominant either in single point or multi point types. The exhaust was not clean though and did stink. Even after catalysts became mandatory the fuel was not cleaned of sulphur and bad egg gas and failed Nicasil was a problem up until about 95.
And yes, oils improved. That is the same on both sides of the pond because the American Petroleum Insbreastute standards predominate and set the minimum standard for oils everywhere.
While all 60s engines were *capable* of long life, not all of
Built like a Mercedes 3675On Thu, 2 Feb 2006, Steve I'm not sure I agree with your premise. Somebody had to make a start on attacking the problem somewhere, and it was us. Without that start, there'd've been...
No we didn't have that problem but we didn't have the emmission controls either.
We had the 112hp 0-60 in 8.2 seconds VW Golf GTi and the Peugeot 206 GTi affordable pocket rockets. Lots of high performance bigger cars as well. I had a Golf GTi and an MG Montego and an Audi Quattro. All lovely cars in their way and substantially high performance. Then there was the Rover 3.5 Vittesse and lots of exotics from Italian Ferrari, Lamborghini etc. The start of BMW M series. The list goes on.
Huw
