Monday, February 25, 2008

Best Gas Mileage? - Try a Vehicle Built in 1973



This makes me believe that car companies and oil companies collude to keep us purchasing plenty of fuel and archaic technology. Not the old "car that runs on water" story.

In 1973, Royal Dutch Shell sponsored a contest to see who could design the most fuel efficient vehicle. The winner, which looks surprisingly like a normal, 1950s car, holds an efficiency record that still stands today.

A chop-top, steel frame 1959 Opel T-1 was equipped with devices that heat and insulate the fuel line so the gasoline entered the engine as a lean vapor with astonishing results: 376.59 miles per gallon.

To be fair - not all of the car's features would work for mass-production. The car is very narrow, uses super-hard low-friction tires, neither of which make the vehicle particularly drivable. The interior is stripped of everything but a seat and lacks a top. But note that even if the car were made more suitable for mass-consumption and lost 200 mpg, it would still get 176 mpg and outperform everything else on the road today.

Source: EENews.net

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seriously, I would take even 100 mpg. It is all about the money. Damn ba$tards make me want to cuss up a fu$king storm so lighting will strike their a$s. Hearing this sort of $hit just pisses me off. HELLO Monday!

Dutch said...

I get so furious when I hear stuff like this that I want to go murder some CEOs.

My second thought is, how can I retrofit this to my car?

Swany said...

Man, some of you have got a bad case of the "Mondays."

I'd like to know how this car actually performed. I don't want to hear it went 0-60 in 30 seconds.