Mileage . . .
What was the mileage in traffic? Sometimes a large car can do OK on highway mileage in flat conditions as the load is mostly aerodynamic: I have a good friend who has pulled close to 30 out of a late ‘90s Lincoln Town Car in West Texas. The Lincoln is reasonably aerodynamic and once it gets up to highway speeds weight doesn’t matter much. Neither the Olds nor the Pontiac would likely have good aerodynamics - GM was late to this - but aside from slightly larger frontal area the Olds is probably not much worse than the Pontiac.
In this case the difference between a ‘71 and ‘74 is significant as emissions standards got way, way stricter through the ‘70s, in particular from ‘73 to ‘74. I’m thankful that we have emissions standards as otherwise our air would look like China’s, but the implementation of the standards in the ‘70s was badly managed by the EPA. The first Federal standards were in ‘68, and like the California standards starting in ‘66 didn’t cause much trouble with economy and power. Problem was the engineers who designed the standards tried to ramp up much too quickly and most car manufacturers didn’t have the ability to meet ‘74 standards and also provide good economy and power.
What was needed was good fuel injection. American companies were very interested in fuel injection in the late ‘50s, GM in fact made small numbers of cars with Rochester mechanical injection (mostly Corvettes) from ‘57 -‘65 but then dropped it as being too expensive. Bendix saw that electronic injection was the best way forward; they may or may not have been familiar with the experimental Caproni electric injection tried on an Alfa Romeo that ran the 1940 Mille Miglia race but it had no real electronic brain.
Bendix developed a system that was theoretically available on some ‘57 Ramblers and ‘58 Chrysler products. Problem was that it wasn’t well developed enough to work reliably thus no injected Ramblers were sold to the public and less than 50 Chrysler vehicles. Almost all of those 50 cars were recalled immediately and fitted by dealers with carburetors. All American development stopped and Bendix sold the patents to Bosch. Bosch had a lot of experience with mechanical injection and spent the early and mid ‘60s developing the electronic system. By the late ‘60s Bosch was able to offer a fairly good system available on various models from Mercedes, VW, Porsche, Saab, Volvo and Citroen.
GM knew they needed electronic injection and got with Bendix who licensed the technology back from Bosch for ‘75, but only on the expensive and exotic Cosworth Vega and the also expensive Cadillac Seville. That left the rest of the GM line (and all of Ford, AMC and Chrysler’s cars) saddled with often uneconomical and unreliable carbs. This isn’t a jibe against all carburetors, basic carbs can work just fine, but when cursed with lots of poorly developed emissions equipment many engines of this era were inefficient. In particular, to keep Nox emissions down many engines had retarded ignition timing that both affected economy and caused them to run hot.
My aunt and uncle had a good ‘71 Delta 88 sedan from ‘71 to ‘78. They liked it so much they swapped it in on a new Olds 98 that was a real lemon for the first year, unlike that ‘71 which rarely gave trouble. They lived in a small rural town of 5000 people where everyone knew everyone else and I still remember how mad my aunt was when an old friend remarked on my aunt’s “new Cutlass”. The Cutlass was the dealership’s loaner while they tried to fix another problem on the 98, she had spent so much time driving it that everyone thought she’d traded the 88 for a Cutlass and not a 98! The problems were eventually worked out but when the 98 got old it got swapped for a Chevy and not another Olds.
