Cars are designed to waste oil - a very small detail

Modern cars must be fitted with a platinum catalyst on the exhaust pipe to convert noxious nitrogen dioxide, and the like, into its harmless constituents. (They literally do not work half the time due to not getting hot enough on the average journey.)

Thinking back there was a blaze of down-market, it needed to be down-market, propaganda, convincing us of the necessity to make them law. Mrs Thatcher stridently spoke out, ever vigilant in the war on pollution.

Why did Mrs Thatcher pronounce so emphatically? It can only have been to communicate to the Jeremy Clarkson's (who, incidentally know bugger all about cars, just joking) to get on side - otherwise he would not have known not to tell the motoring morons we were being put upon by government.

Quess what? You can't use lean burn engines - engines that use less fuel - if one of these gizmos is fitted:

Methods for converting detrimental substances such as CO, HC, NOx and the like contained in the automotive exhaust gas into harmless substances by reduction or oxidation reaction employing a three-way catalyst of platinum-rhodium impregnated on an alumina support have been well known in the art. However, the three-way catalyst has an inherent disadvantage that the air to fuel ratio (A/F) of the exhaust gas has to be set approximately at a stoichiometric ratio to accomplish efficient cleaning. For example, provided that the lean-burn engine air to fuel ratio is leaner than the stoichiometric ratio, the increased content of oxygen in the exhaust gas from the lean-burn engine causes inefficient reduction of NOx to N2, consequently emitting NOx to the air.

What chance do we have against these people, they are the masters of detail?