TopGear.com America - Project Car

[Blind_Io]

http://www.topgear.com/us/features/m...-a-70-mpg-car/

The new Honda Insight hybrid is expected to get 43 mpg on the highway. A Toyota Prius or Volkswagen Jetta TDI will get you roughly the same. Look beyond that one number, though, and the three cars share a common thread: They all have spectacularly low lifetime CO2 output, because each and every one will bore you to death before you get a chance to refill the tank. Each of these greenies will do 0-60 in about a week, they're all styled like lumps of cold mashed potatoes and every last one handles like a couch. If this is what it takes to save the world, maybe the world isn't worth saving.
No, if we're going to stop the terrorists, rebuild the polar bears' igloos and somehow turn on the global air conditioner, we're going to need much more impressive mileage and, more important, something that's actually worth driving. You can't honestly expect us to give up driving fun just for a silly little planet, can you?
So if 45 mpg doesn't change the equation, how about 70? Suck on that for a second. Forty-five is probably a lot better than whatever you're driving, but it's still within the realm of the imaginable. But 70? It's absurd. Perfect, then.
On top of unlikely mileage, we need it from something with a little soul. We don't need supercar performance, but we should at least be able to outrun a minivan. Naught to 60 in 7 seconds is about as slow as we can stand before our minds wander. Come to think of it, breaking the 7-second barrier will also roast a Ferrari 308, which will help keep that Magnum P.I. fantasy alive.
And then there's the price. If trees and puppies and little green frogs make your heart go pitter-patter, the Insight's $20,000 price tag is downright reasonable. Lovers of the other kind of green will always do the math, though, and inevitably determine that it will take 18 years of fuel savings to pay off their investment, so they might as well keep driving that Hummer. Price, then, is key if we really want to save the world.
For absolutely no other reason than the fact that a good theme seems to be developing entirely on its own, $7,000 seems like the kind of irresistibly low price that would make even Arnold give up his monster truck.
So there it is, the top 10 cars that get 70 mpg, do 0-60 in less than 7 seconds and cost $7,000 (and have sexy Italian styling):
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10:
No? Well, then, it's official. TopGear.com America has a new project.
We've got the ground rules (7,7,7 plus sexy Italian styling), now all we need is a plan. First thing to think about is where we want that gas mileage. Most hybrid cars get their great gas mileage sitting in traffic, while diesel-engine cars do their best hypermiling on the open road. Never mind the fact that a typical hybrid battery costs more than our entire project budget, we have no interest driving in traffic. Diesel it is.
Now, sexy Italian styling that we can get for cheap and stuff full of diesely goodness...Let's see, DeTomaso Pantera? Too flashy. Alfa Romeo Spyder? Drop-tops aren't aerodynamic enough. Volkswagen Scirocco?
Don't let that German name fool you. The Volkswagen Scirocco didn't become an international icon of modestly priced sex appeal based on its cold, calculated engineering efficiency. No, sir. It was the mighty Italian straight-edge of hired pen Giorgetto Giugiaro that empowered the Scirocco with its babe-magnet charm. Being little more than a half-squashed Rabbit, the Scirocco will also swallow a Rabbit's diesel engine like it was designed to be there.

But wait. While converting a gas-powered car to diesel power is technically simple (replace the engine and the gas tank), it's bureaucratically cumbersome. Our creation will need a license plate, and that license plate requires a registration, and renewing that registration will require some kind of emissions test (unless you're fortunate enough to live in one of those hillbilly backwaters where they haven't figured out why the air is yellow). That test will require some state-sponsored bio-robot to perform an inspection where he checks off boxes indicating the greasy bits under the hood look basically like they did in 1975, and that the stink coming out the tailpipe still smells right. If the book doesn't say the Scirocco's pipe gas should smell like a diesel, we're dead in the water.

That narrows us down to one last choice, one last diesel-friendly product of Giugiaro's origami period: the Scirocco's upright, responsible older sister, the Rabbit Diesel herself. Aerodynamically, it's no Pantera, but we can get one cheap, we can put a plate on it and maybe, just maybe, we can glue on enough aerodynamic wizardry to make her slide through the air.
So just like that, we have a plan.
Step 1: We'll buy a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel right here in New York City.
Step 2: We'll drive it across thousands of miles of frozen tundra to Regina, Saskatchewan, where CWS Tuning will skillfully replace the clattery old oil burner with a modern, computer-controlled, turbocharged VW TDI engine.
Step 3: We'll head south to sunny Southern California to thaw our bones and have UCLA aerodynamics professor John McNulty show us how to make a brick slippery.
Just because the sexy Italian thing was handled so easily, don't expect the three 7's to be dispatched without a fight. Hitting 70 mpg will take more than a diesel engine and some aero tricks. We'll have to get clever with gearing, we'll have to learn about low rolling-resistance tires, and we'll have to use special low-friction oils. Every trick will have to come out from up our sleeves.

But before we begin, there's one crucial thing every project car must have: a name.
This is where you come in. We've been calling this project the Sipster simply because it's all our synapses can do to get past the words "sexy Italian styling." Please come up with something better than the Sipster, Mileage Maven, Pump Dumper, Mangy Miser or Wabbit Warrior, and when you do, leave them in the comments below. We'll throw the best up in a poll on Monday and you'll all decide. The winner gets a shwag pack with Top Gear merchandise.

[killpanda]

Doesn't seem to work outside the US

[Cobol74]

The Gas Miser - hey what you going to do?

Good luck with this - I hope it workd out OK.

[XYZviper]

They must change the head lights to proper European ones, because now it looks like shit. And the VW Golf mk1 is one of the best looking cars.

[XeroState]

I'll keep an eye out for this car here since they are bringing it to CWS Tuning. No promises though!

[bartboy9891]

The 70mpg shouldn't be too impossible, but the 7 second to 60mph will be tough. A quick search resulted in these acceleration times for the diesel Rabbit:

1979 Volkswagen Rabbit (Diesel)
0-60mph: 21.3 seconds
1/4 mile: 22.2 seconds
^ The 0-60 is almost the same as the 1/4 mile

1979 Volkswagen Rabbit (Turbo Diesel)
0-60mph: 17.9 seconds
1/4 mile: 21.0 seconds

So they'll need to cut at least 11 seconds off the 0-60mph time.

[Blind_Io]

Cool, I just noticed that Viper posted this on the front page. Schweet.

[XeroState]

Originally Posted by bartboy9891

The 70mpg shouldn't be too impossible, but the 7 second to 60mph will be tough. A quick search resulted in these acceleration times for the diesel Rabbit:

1979 Volkswagen Rabbit (Diesel)
0-60mph: 21.3 seconds
1/4 mile: 22.2 seconds
^ The 0-60 is almost the same as the 1/4 mile

1979 Volkswagen Rabbit (Turbo Diesel)
0-60mph: 17.9 seconds
1/4 mile: 21.0 seconds

So they'll need to cut at least 11 seconds off the 0-60mph time.

Check out some of the other vehicles CWS Tuning has done. They include a very impressive B6T Festiva that is almost a 13 second car that still gets almost 40mpg. To hit 60 in 7 seconds it doesn't have to be near a 13 second car.

Not saying it's going to be easy but it's definitely not impossible.

[Dr_Grip]

Why replace the lightweight original Diesel with a heavy, modern VW TDI engine? This car easily does 48 to 50 US mpg with the original engine, so one should maybe start from there... on the other hand, a new engine puts one a _massive_ step closer to the 7s 0-60 mark...

[svb]

Should be an interesting project. The VW/Audi 2.0 TDI is a great engine. Still, this will take some serious work for them to achieve the goal they've set for themselves.

I've been wanting to do a diesel challenge for awhile but we're just so damn limited here in the US as far as diesel options go. In LA, the only cheap diesel cars you can get your hands on are the old Mercedes.