why do speedometers go as high as 140 – 160 mph but some average cars can’t go faster than 100 -120?
In: Technology
History lesson time, you little ones, gather ’round. There was a time, before mummy and daddy made you, that Congress (antonym of Progress) mandated 85 MPH speedometers, but consumers absolutely despised them. A few people could peg the speedometer, yet be able to estimate speed off the tachometer anyway, since the car was clearly running in the top gear, with a known ratio between the speedo and the tach. But mostly, it gave the impression to prospective customers that if 85 MPH was all the car could do, it was just wimpy and underpowered. It didn’t help that automakers were experimenting with high-mileage 6 and 4 cylinder cars at the same time. Congress eventually dropped the mandate, just as they backed off mandated 55 MPH highway speed limits and the automatic seat belts that would try to strangle you when you closed the door.
These things may be so far in the past that mere 5 year olds like yourselves don’t remember these things that were tried and failed. The 85 MPH speedometer law was enacted in 1979 and revoked in 1982. The law also required highlighting 55 MPH on the speedo, which was the mandated maximum speed limit at the time, in an effort to reduce gasoline consumption following big price hikes attributed to the Arab oil embargo.
You ypung whippersnappers probably weren’t alive when the Windfall Profit Tax was enacted because oil companies made out like bandits when gasoline prices rose like crazy and all their oil reserves were repriced to the new market reality. Nor could you remember gas rationing to about half a tank per fill-up or the even-odd rationing based on the last number in your license plate (very few people had vanity plates, and I’ve forgotten whether they were counted as odd or even). Families swapped cars so they could have one with an even plate and one with an odd plate.
One oul company: Shell, even tried to get Americans to buy gasoline in liters instead of gallons so they wouldn’t have to replace gas pumps to add a digit to the price per unit when oil prices got close to the plainly unbearable price of $1.00 per gallon. It’s a big factor in why the metric system is despised to this day. Highway signs of that era were starting to display distances to remote cities in both miles and kilometers until that time.
But in the end, Reagan illegally got the American hostages locked up in Iran for several extra months, so Jimmy Carter couldn’t take credit for negotiating their release, and it was sunrise in America again, and all was well ever after except for those damned polluting trees.
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