I have always been a fan of the Mustang. To my knowlege, it is the only muscle car to survive the axe, unless you count the Corvette as a muscle car. Now I will admit the mid 70s was not so nice to the Mustang. After all, Ford needed to have an economical car, and I guess they thought they could get away with branding the Mustang as economical. Well, in my opinion, it really didn't work too well. Who ever heard of a muscle car that was fuel efficient?

Now it is 2008, and Doug Pelmear is claiming to have broken the rule. He is driving a 1987 Mustang, and claiming 400hp and 80 mpg on ethanol, or and estimated 110 mpg on gasoline. Mr. Pelmear is so confident in his accomplishment, he has entered the car to compete for the Progressive Automotive X Prize.

Obviously, this is no easy feat. Mr. Pelmear claims to accomplish this with the aid of electronics and a redesign of the engine. Most manufacturers would be happy to be able to offer a car with half these figures. So obviously, Mr. Pelmear is now being criticized as some claim this is one of the best hoaxes on the net. After all he got CNN to interview him. How is it this man can get 80mpg when the manufacturer, with all their billions, cannot get 55 mpg?

Well, I have a question of my own: Have we allowed ourselves to believe that not one single American has the ingenuity to accomplish this? If I remember correctly, Scaled Composites won the Ansari X prize before. Guess what, most of us have never heard of them before this.

If Mr. Pelmear is true, then I say he deserves our support. Next year will show his sincerety. Wouldn't it be good to be able to drive a V8 Mustang that gets more miles to the gallon than a Prius? Obviously he is not going to give out the secrets until he has his creation fully patented, so stop using this as an excuse to sully his name.

Another question: Is it a muscle car if it doesn't have a V8? John Wayland certainly thinks so. Actually, he believes the White Zombie is more than a muscle car.

This 1972 Datsun will go through the 1/4 mile at over 109 mph. It is powered by two siamesed electric motors making over 450 hp. Does not sound like much, but in the electric world this is alot of power. Consider the torque curve of an electric motor is quite different to a piston engine.

Though we may be happy with the performance of the car, it is quite obvious we will have to sacrifice some for range.

Cars like the Tesla Roadster are anticipating a 200 mile range, or an approximate equivalent of over 250 mpg. This car will trounce many sport cars with a 0-60 of less than 4 seconds.

Thanks to modern technology, batteries will be allowing us an even greater range, with better performance.

So we may have to wait quite a while for that 80 mpg car, but it surely is on its way to us. Support our entrepeneurs as they help us to lessen our reliance on foreign oil