I'm talking city fuel economy. Don't carmakers have to average city/hwy fuel economy standards to meet up with the government regulations? I know, my car gets like 24-25 hwy mpg but only 16 in the city.

The current federal tests for mpg are a crock. The car is put on a dyno and ran at something like 55mph for a set time and the mpg is figured from there.

New test procedures which follow more of a real world driving are in the works.

There are a lot of things about this that need to be improved which I why I find Mr Lutz rebutal to be just so much whining.
When I watched "An Inconvienent Truth" I took special note of the pie chart Mr Gore showed near the end when he asked "what can we do?"
Vehicle emissions were a relatively small slice of the pie. Energy generation and other industry were the biggest offenders. But this country is by far the biggest producer of all kinds of emissions. So as usual we must be the ones to do the most.
More stringent regulations are going to need to be levied on all the other nations that are hot on our heels when it comes to industry and power generation.
Energy generation seems to me to be the biggest place we could make a difference, be it wind, solar or otherwise.

There will always be a need for large trucks but I fully believe that many people could do with less. The reason I say this is because I've seen so many people I have worked with over the years say with arrogance "screw the gas I want the big truck"...then when gas shoots over $3 a gallon they are the first to complain "I gotta get rid of this hog" I dont mmean to offend anyone who owns a truck but to me that just sounds like stupidity. I find it hard to believe that you can consider making such a large financial investment and not consider the operating cost down the road. On the flip side I have also known peole who have owned trucks, no matter the cost, and have never complained a peep. They consider it the price of admission. Most of those people also own small economy cars they commute in as well.
The bigger thing that kills me is the number of women I see driving huge 4wd SUVs. My best friends wife is a prime example. She owns a Tahoe and yes they have two kids, but that truck never leaves the asphalt and when it snows (which aint often around here) she stays home. Yet she gripes about the cost of fuel. To me that is wasteful and just plain dumb. There are many,many other vehicles out there that would easily carry two children, as a matter of fact his PT Cruiser carries both kids just as well as her truck. They dont tow anything and they dont go camping off road. I just have to ask, if gas were $3 a gallon when she bought the truck, would her decision have been the same?

I don't know where you got your previous numbers, but a stock/moderately modded GTP can easily manage 23-26 mpg mixed and 35mpg highway or more. It's when people start throwing in more aggressive mods that the mpg starts to eat itself alive. Oh, also their foot factors in.

i still wont ever believe that these cars get that high of MPG. i have never seen more that 28-29 on the highway and maybe 18 in town. when im being nice

Don't believe it then.

Your car is older and it's logical for a car to lose a little MPG over the years as internal things wear out, plus you still have the different gearing of a GT, right?

I did the math for my car, I know they can get that mileage.

Yah, just saw on the news that right now the government has it at 26.7 avg mpg and it is going up to 34.5 or something close to that in 2014.

And keep in mind they are changing the vehicle categories. Right now the HHR and PT cruiser are classified as get this "trucks" That's how GM and DC are able to have the big motored trucks. The "truck" catagory is going to be more stringent.

I understand that was Chrysler's whole purpose for offering a panel version of the PT. If it was used as a fleet sale or business then it was considered a "truck"...although I dont ever recall seeing a PT panel outside of the show. I have seen a panel version of the HHR.

Overall, the G8 will probably move forward and won't be canceled at some time. They invested a lot in the design of the G8 and it doesn't seem like it will be grandfathered in.

Regardless on what everyone's opinions are about global warming, they should be more proactive in making cars more fuel efficient.

An argument is GM builds based on demand. If these big drinking cars were to stop selling, they'll stop making them. Government telling a company to stop making something people want does seem slightly illogical.

However, folks are saying they want more fuel efficient cars. No one runs to GM because they have the “biggest engine in its class”. GM just need to shift priority.

I've heard folks say you can't get better fuel efficiency from a V-8. Find out how. Go hybrid or Diesel if you have to. I do give them a firm handshake with the ideas they implemented so far but that's it.

G8 isn't affected production starts in Oct. As for future products they are in the stages that they can be shelved until GM can get it's head out of it's rear and start building lighter cars. They have the engine tech with these new high feature V6s and DOD V8s it's very doable. GM is in the bad habit of building overweight cars. Take the G8 for example it's going to weigh in over 4000 pounds. That's close to full size trucks. MB makes the same size vehicles at 500-700 pounds lighter. It takes fuel to move weight.

Indeed. I read folks saying the weight is all the safety equipment like all the worthless airbags, ABS, etc. Anyone can debate if these are worth the weight. But GM would have to convince the public that such equipment isn't worth it and their daily driver needs to be bare bones w/ a lot of power and a little better MPG.

There is nothing wrong with a RWD V6 or even a hybrid. Ask Lexus. Yea apples vs. oranges but still. Yea they don't save the earth. whatever. Do they make power? Do they have better mpg? Hop on the bandwagon when the technology becomes cheaper and win. GM needs to stop trying to please dreamers that don't buy cars.

MB, BMW etc all make their cars with those same safety features and manage to keep the cars at a respectable wieght.

Even before my top end swap, on a good tank I got 19mpg city, and about 25mpg hwy.

Now I get 16 and 23, give or take. After I get my tune I'm wanting to be back in the 18-20 range, but who knows. But even so, I've never seen anywhere close to 30mpg all highway.

I've reached 30 a couple of times when I do a cruise control at about 65-70mph...even when I cruise at 70-75 I still get 26-27.

I think a cam is one of those mods that yields good power but at fuel cost but you were saying you had never made those numbers even before you started modding. I personally dont think I'll ever see that peak again since they went to 10% ethanol at all the pumps...ethanol bumps octane ratings but fuel mileage suffers because of it.

It sometimes seems hard for me to believe as well that a GTP could knock down 34mpg...but if you consider taller gearing combined with an engine running at low boost levels when cruising, the L67 is probably atomizing its fuel better than the N/A L36 despite the higher compression.

Almost twenty years ago, famed mechanic Smokey Yunick patented an engine system that used what looked like a turbo but was what he called a "homoginizer"...it used low boost levels to heat the incoming air/fuel charge so as to completely vaporize the fuel instead of it being carried as droplets or mist in the intake charge. His test mule was a VW rabbit that he had equipped with a 1liter V-Twin engine. This car made mad tire smoking burnouts, pulled hard in every gear while knocking down 50mpg on pump gas...and as usual, he sold the patent and we've never heard from it again. Mileage and power can be had together.