The Secret is in the Slant!
Also there's another factor to consider: We can't get a gallon of gasoline for $1.92 (1960 price in today's dollars) but we also can't get a gallon of 1960 gasoline. We get a gallon of 2012 gasoline which is vastly better in every respect except one (adulteration with alcohol due to the corn lobby having bought more congressmen and-women than you or I did). So that needs to be considered when comparing how things used to be vs. how they are now. The real unit price of gasoline is higher, but we spend less on spark plugs, we spend less on periodic manual decarboning of combustion chambers, etc.
Dan,
When they took the lead out of gasoline, they deprived it of its anti-knock capabilities and the compression ratios of new engines IMMEDIATELY went in the tank, because of it.
This did nothing good for gas mileage, OR power. The 1968 340's were 10.5:1. The '71's were 10.3:1. The 1972's (mandated to run on unleaded fuel) were dropped to 8.5:1, I believe. I have read that when they were building the prototype 1949 Oldsmobile "Rocket" V8s, they ran several at 12:1. That exercise was predicated on the assumption that high-octane fuel would be universally-available... way back then!
Octane ratings plunged with the advent of unleaded fuel, and have never recovered.
Technology from the auto manufacturers has applied one band-aid after another for forty years, finally resulting in complete engine redesigns with expensive, but effective, systems such as computerized fuel mangment, active phasing of cam timing, fast-burn combustion chambers, knock-sensor dictated spark advance, and probably incantations from a witch doctor swinging a dead chicken around.
I am a layman, certainly no engineer, but I well remember when Sunoco 260, Esso Golden Extra and D-X "purple" gasoline, with "Boron"... (at a whopping 36-cents a gallon) were ALL over 100 octane.
I am aware of the research/motor octane "average" figure we get at the pump, nowadays, but I don't think that method would do much to reduce the original "100+octane" gas that was an everyday option in 1956, to anywhere near the numbers we see on the pump, today.
That being said, I don't know enough about gasoline to begin to understand what you mean when you say, " We get a gallon of 2012 gasoline
which is vastly better in every respect except one (adulteration with alcohol due to the corn lobby having bought more congressmen and-women than you or I did)."
How is it better? Does something in it build a cushion on the valve seats like leaded fuel did, or will I have to take my 1964 slant six head and have hardened seats installed so they will last awhile? $$$$$$$ Is it better, in that I can actually run 15 pounds of boost in my turbocharged slant six without fear of detonation, as I could have with the earlier fuel? Or will I need some octane booster, severely retarded timing, an alcohol injector, and an intercooler to
hopefully stave off detonation from this 93-octane "mouse milk" (which is as good as it gets, around here.) I don't think so.
I don't see any kind of a
significant improvement in currently available gasoline, compared with the gas I could buy when I was a youngster.
What REALLY frosted me, was that they took the lead out of gasoline (causing mileage to plummet, along with compression ratios) at the exact same time there was a (manufactured) "gas shortage," which did nothing but exacerbate the problerm. Timing is everything in this bidness...
Geeze, you gotta love this government.
Has anybody reading this ever heard of a person or persons dying (or, even getting sick) from automobile exhaust fumes containing lead? I have never heard of a single case, before the ban, or after.
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