Mister Sinister

Why not?It's how people got around for decades before fuel injection became standard. Icould drive my 55 every day if Icould afford the gas, but that's a product of the modifications I've made to it, not how it was originally designed. I've owned daily drivers that were carbureted, and they were of no more bother than other fuel injected vehicles I've owned, but Iam particular about maintenance. Granted, cars used to not be a "turn the key and forget it"as people THINKthey are today, you had to pay a little more attention to your vehicle in the carburetor days. If anything, modern vehicles have made drivers lazy, and many neglect basic manitnenance, because they never think about it.
As far as mileage and emissions are concerned, you can get almost the same mileage out of a carbureted engine that you can get from fuel injection, but you have to keep it tuned. Efficiency is still the same concept, regardless of how you atomize your air and fuel mixture. My father owns a 59 Corvette. He's had it for almost 50 years. It's got the base 283 engine with 230 horsepower, and a 2 speed powerglide transmission. When he stays on top of the tune, this car will knock down almost 30mpg highway, and burn just as clean as a modern non-LEV car. And modern vehicles still pollute plenty. That rotten-egg smell you get from some cars when you really step on them? That's caused by hydrogen sulfide, a by-product of the conversion process.. Hydrogen sulfide that is released into the atmosphere, and when it mixes with water in rain clouds, creates sulphuric acid, or acid rain. If anything, until recent years emissions equipment did little to improve emissions over older cars, but went a long way towards reducing horsepower, increasing fuel consumption, and increasing the heat generated by the combustion process, not even to mention the added cost of developing and installing all this equipment, that got passed directly on to the consumer. All this has thankfully changed due to advancements in technology and design.
It always makes me laught to see claims of 45mpg being a big deal. You could easily get that on a bad day with an 80's Honda Civic with a carburetor. The trouble came when vehicles startred getting bigger, heavier, more powerful, and arguably safer. We're just now getting back to where we were with fuel economy in the early to mid 80's with hybrid vehicles.