Letters

Your two car reviews (Chevy Malibu iLT and Buick Enclave, June 5) do your readers a disservice since these vehicles represent anachronisms based on today's fuelconsumption requirements. Anyone who has to commute to work needs a car that gets far more than 22 mpg in the case of the Chevy and unknown in the case of the Buick. Information about fuel-efficient vehicles now or soon-to-beavailable would be useful as would information about what is available in other high-fuel cost areas such as Europe so we could press manufacturers and government to make more fuel-efficient vehicles available. My personal experience shows that Ford Focuses and Mondeos available in Europe deliver what converts to be 40+ mpg as the norm. So did an Alpha Romeo GT1, Renault Megaine, and VW Passat. It appears the technology exists to deliver twice the mileage of U.S. vehicles. It's just not here. Giving our readers information is hardly a disservice. And we are unaware of any fuel-consumption requirements other than CAFE standards. By the way, GM sold 2,939 Enclaves in May of this year, a 56% increase over last May. It also sold 15, 792 Malibus, a 39.1% bump over last May. So apparently not everyone believes these vehicles are anachronisms. — Editor Everything old is new again, again The opposed-piston, opposedcylinder engine you describe in your column ("One less conspiracy," May 8) sounds a lot like the Junkers Jumo 205 diesel. A JU-86 so equipped broke a distance record in 1934 while flying emergency earthquake-relief supplies in South America. It was a six-cylinder vertically opposed engine in which exhaust ports were controlled by one piston and intakes by another. The exhaust side ran about 10% ahead of the intake. The idea has also been employed in gasoline 2-strokes, but usually with side-byside pistons connected by a