Back in the early 1970s, MotorTrend spilled a lot of ink railing against federally mandated emissions and fuel economy standards. We argued government mandates would drive up car prices, strain our infrastructure, and force people to buy vehicles they didn’t want—and that they wouldn’t solve the air pollution problem anyway.
We were wrong.
Sure, emissions standards did make cars worse—for a while. Anyone of age in the 1970s remembers engines encumbered by vines of smog equipment that made them hard to start and difficult to tune. No question, the Clean Air
