Tag Archives: vehicles

News

Why Your Old Car Might Have Been More Efficient Than the New One

There was a time—not that long ago—when buying a car meant getting more kilometers out of every liter of fuel for less money. Call it the golden age of efficiency, roughly a decade back. Today, many drivers are scratching their heads, wondering how it’s possible that their older cars sipped fuel more politely than today’s newer, more advanced machines.

Fuel consumption still matters. A lot. Whether you’re shopping for diesel or gasoline, efficiency remains one of the top criteria for buyers. And yes, diesel still carries the reputation of being the sensible, frugal choice. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: year after year, drivers are discovering that new cars—packed with technology and engineering buzzwords—don’t always burn less fuel. In some cases, they burn more.

So what changed?

The Cost of Being Clean

Modern engines are designed under far stricter emissions regulations than those from 10 years ago. On paper, that’s good news for the environment. In reality, meeting those standards often comes at the expense of fuel efficiency.

Today’s engines are surrounded by layers of emissions hardware that simply didn’t exist before. Diesel particulate filters (DPF), complex catalytic converters, AdBlue tanks and pumps, additional sensors, plumbing, and control units—all of it adds restriction, complexity, and weight. Even the most advanced fuel-injection systems can’t fully compensate for engines that are, in effect, being forced to breathe through a tighter mask.

The result? Engines that work harder to meet emissions targets, sometimes consuming more fuel than their simpler predecessors.

Technology Adds Weight—Lots of It

Not all modern engines are less efficient. Electrified powertrains, especially in urban driving, can be impressively economical. But even they carry a hidden cost: mass. Electric motors, batteries, inverters, wiring—none of it is weightless.

And electrification is just one part of the story. Modern cars are loaded with features that were once optional or nonexistent. Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) now come standard, bringing with them cameras, radars, sensors, control modules, and even mandatory “black box” data recorders. Safety has improved dramatically, but physics still sends the bill.

Then there’s comfort and convenience. Larger wheels, thicker sound insulation, power everything, and automatic transmissions that are now the norm rather than the exception. Luxury sells—but it also weighs.

The Golf Test: Numbers Don’t Lie

Let’s put some numbers to it. Take the Volkswagen Golf, a benchmark for sensible engineering, in its popular 2.0 TDI DSG form:

  • Golf 6: 1,297 kg
  • Golf 7: 1,316 kg
  • Golf 8: 1,369 kg

And that’s before ticking the boxes for extra equipment. Add panoramic roofs, bigger wheels, electric seats, and advanced driver aids, and the scale keeps climbing. More mass requires more energy, and no amount of clever software can rewrite that basic law of physics.

Smaller Engines, Bigger Burden

At the same time, manufacturers—under regulatory pressure—have been downsizing engines. Smaller displacement, higher output, more stress. While the exterior dimensions of cars haven’t shrunk, the engines pulling them have.

Combine a heavier vehicle, a more restrictive exhaust system, and an engine extracting more power from less volume, and the outcome is predictable: higher real-world fuel consumption. It’s one reason why modern diesel cars are becoming less financially attractive, pushing manufacturers to quietly phase them out.

The Human Factor Still Matters

What many drivers overlook is that technology—old or new—can only do so much. Short trips, stop-and-go traffic, and aggressive driving styles can destroy efficiency faster than any emissions system. Cold starts, traffic jams, and heavy right feet punish modern engines just as much as older ones.

We can’t turn back the clock to the era of simpler, lighter, ultra-efficient engines. What we can do is adapt. Smoother acceleration, fewer short trips, and avoiding congestion where possible remain the most effective tools for saving fuel—no software update required.

Progress has made cars safer, cleaner, and more comfortable than ever. But when it comes to fuel economy, sometimes the past really did have the advantage.

Photo: Shutterstock

Story

How a Swiss traffic cop accidentally made some of the greatest car photography ever

Car and Driver has spent decades obsessing over motion—0–60 times, lateral g, the poetry of a perfect apex. Arnold Odermatt did the opposite. He photographed the moment after everything went wrong. And somehow, by standing still for thirteen seconds at a time, he captured the soul of the automobile age more clearly than most people chasing speed ever did.

Odermatt wasn’t an artist, at least not by job description. He was a police officer in the Swiss canton of Nidwalden, a place so tidy and tranquil it feels engineered by a focus group. Starting in 1948, he spent more than forty years documenting accidents and crime scenes on its roads—quiet two-lanes, mountain passes, intersections that look harmless until physics intervenes. These images weren’t meant for gallery walls. They were evidence. Insurance exhibits. Visual footnotes to written police reports.

And yet, decades later, they hang in museums.

Around thirteen seconds—that’s how long each exposure took. In an era of magnesium flash cartridges and Rolleiflex cameras mounted to tripods, there was no spray-and-pray. You didn’t “chimp” a shot. You committed. Odermatt took tens of thousands of photographs this way, lighting night-time wrecks so completely they looked like daylight, freezing bent steel, cracked glass, and stunned landscapes with clinical clarity.

Before all this, he trained as a baker. Health issues forced a career change, and the Nidwalden police gained something they didn’t know they needed: Switzerland’s first dedicated police photographer. Odermatt even built himself a darkroom in an old toilet at the Stans police station, which feels perfectly on-brand for a man who valued function over romance.

His philosophy was brutally simple. “A good photograph is in focus; you have to be able to see everything you want.” No blur, no drama lighting, no editorializing. Just precision. The same mindset engineers bring to brake calipers or steering racks. Odermatt treated every scene like a mechanical problem that had already failed, and his job was to show exactly how.

The cars in these photos—Saabs, Opels, Peugeots, anonymous sedans—are rarely the point, yet they’re impossible to ignore. They lie twisted against trees, folded around poles, improbably perched on embankments. What’s striking isn’t gore or chaos, but order. The wrecks look composed, almost polite, as if even disaster in Switzerland obeys regulations.

For decades, no one outside the local courts cared. Then, in the early 1990s, chance intervened. Odermatt’s son, Urs, while researching a film, stumbled across his father’s vast archive of negatives. What he found wasn’t documentation—it was art. Quiet, absurd, tragic, sometimes darkly funny art that spoke volumes about cars, roads, and the fragile pact between humans and machines.

The international art world agreed. In 2001, legendary curator Harald Szeemann selected 32 photographs from Odermatt’s Karambolage series for the Venice Biennale. From there, the exhibitions snowballed—Paris, New York, beyond. The retired traffic cop became an internationally recognized artist without ever changing how he worked. Same photos. New audience.

Odermatt lived long enough to enjoy it. He died in 2021 at 95, having watched the ordinary work of his career become extraordinary in hindsight. Today, his photographs reside in museum collections around the world, time capsules from an era when cars were simpler, roads were quieter, and consequences were still very real.

On what would have been his 100th birthday, Berlin’s Springer Gallery is marking the milestone with a major exhibition running through January 31, 2026. It’s a fitting tribute—not just to a photographer, but to an accidental historian of the automobile.

Because if you really want to understand cars, don’t just look at how they move. Look at how they stop.

Source: Galerie Springer Berlin

News

Nissan’s November Numbers Tell a Two-Speed Story: Strong Abroad, Stumbling at Home

If you’re looking for a single headline to sum up Nissan’s November 2025 performance, try this: The world is carrying Nissan, but Japan is dragging its heels.

Nissan Motor Co. released its latest production, sales, and export figures for November, and the data paints a picture of a company operating in two very different realities. Overseas factories are humming along well enough to keep global production nearly level, while domestic output and sales continue to slide at a worrying pace.

Production: Japan Hits the Brakes

Globally, Nissan built 257,008 vehicles in November, a 4.2-percent decline compared with last year. That’s not catastrophic, but it masks a sharp regional imbalance.

Production in Japan plunged 31.6 percent year-over-year, falling to just 41,874 vehicles. Passenger cars took the hardest hit, down more than 30 percent, while commercial vehicles weren’t spared either. For a company whose engineering identity is deeply rooted in its home market, that’s a sobering number.

Outside Japan, however, the story improves. Overseas production rose 3.9 percent to 215,134 vehicles, with China (+22 percent), the UK (+18 percent), and the U.S. (+7.1 percent) all posting solid gains. Mexico remained Nissan’s single largest production hub, despite a 17.6-percent drop for the month.

The takeaway? Nissan’s global footprint is doing exactly what it was designed to do—absorb shocks when one region falters—but the weakness at home is too large to ignore.

Sales: Japan Slumps, China Pushes Back

Sales followed a similar pattern. Global deliveries totaled 265,067 vehicles in November, down 4.9 percent from a year earlier.

Japan was again the problem child. Total domestic sales, including minivehicles, dropped 26.5 percent. Registered passenger vehicles fell off a cliff, plunging nearly 40 percent year-over-year, while minivehicles—a segment usually prized for stability—still slipped by 4.6 percent.

Across the Pacific, Nissan’s performance was steadier. North American sales declined 5.6 percent overall, with the U.S. down 7.7 percent but Mexico posting modest growth. China stood out as a bright spot, with sales climbing 10.3 percent in November, a rare win in a fiercely competitive and rapidly electrifying market.

Sales outside Japan were down just 1.5 percent, reinforcing the idea that Nissan’s international lineup still has traction—even if it’s not growing aggressively.

Exports: Fewer Ships Leaving Port

Exports from Japan added another wrinkle to the story. Total exports fell 25.1 percent in November, with Europe taking the biggest hit, down more than 30 percent. Shipments to North America ticked up slightly, but not nearly enough to offset declines elsewhere.

For the year to date, exports remain down 16.8 percent, underlining how Japan’s production slowdown is rippling outward.

Nissan’s November report doesn’t scream crisis, but it does whisper concern. Overseas plants and markets are keeping the company afloat, yet Japan’s steep declines in production and sales suggest structural issues that short-term fixes won’t solve.

In other words, Nissan isn’t losing the global race—but it’s starting several laps behind at home. And in today’s brutally competitive auto industry, that’s not a position any automaker can afford to hold for long.

Source: Nissan