Various rules

[VLADDS@domain.elided]

I don't know about easy access and easy compliance to US market.As we ALL 
know, every 50 cents/car for mass-production can mean the difference between 
life/death of a certain car, from the manufacturere point of view.If for some 
reason, as well, the manufacturer has to build "offset", away from it's 
mainstream specs, another factor is how many he can sell of that abnormal 
variation.If sufficient are achieved the variation is viable.If not, it's 
dead.
Also: European cars are in a way better cause of their better power/weight 
ration, speaking in general terms.That means usually better gas mileage and 
handling.Now some of these requirements add weight to the car.For something 
like an 164 it may be not that dramatic, but for something like a VW Golf GTI 
it makes all the difference between an "almost" sportscar and nothing special.
I'll tell you this for sure...There are not many 164 automatics on the 
streets of EU.Also, i think it was only available with the 3.0 V6, which 
probably is less than a quarter of 164 driving in EU (cause of high taxes for 
high displacement, over there, the initial value loss increases with the 
displacement)
I'm not sure where the almost 100 Kg difference between the european L and 
the US L went, but i was told that besides the full option package that must 
have been like 30% of the difference, there have been the heavyer bumper 
reinforcements and the triplex glass
Vlad
164L

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End of alfa-digest V7 #932
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