Automotive Saturday: The Wood River Question

And, at 376 miles/gallon, the winner is... a nice 1959 Opel

Guest post by Dr. Steve Porter, whose latest book, Preserving America, is available now.

If you drove along the Great River Road on the Illinois side of the Mississippi just about where the Missouri joins up with it, you’d get to Wood River, Illinois. It’s a fairly typical Midwestern town: eleven-and-a-half thousand; not too far from St. Louis; prone to river flooding. You could stop at Fast Eddie’s and get a good burger for ninety-nine cents. Or you could visit the oval track at the old airfield where Shell Oil conducted some pretty amazing tests.

Funny thing about the tests. It was long before the world got bent out of shape about global warming and ecology-- long before the big three U.S. auto makers needed the government to bail them out. Long before the Tea Party was clamoring for change.

You see, Shell wanted to find out just how far a car could go on a gallon of its gas. They invited people to fuel economy competitions, and here’s what they found.

In 1949, a 1947 Studebaker got 149.95 mpg.
In 1968, a 1959 Fiat 600 got 244.35 mpg.
In 1973, a 1959 Opel got 376.59 mpg.

Not bad.

A trick of some kind, you’re thinking, right? Sorry. No tricks. These were modified stock cars right off the assembly lines. They were stripped down, yes, to lower weight and wind resistance, but the engines were stock engines using old-fashioned carburetors and coil-based ignition systems. No electronics. No fancy computers. No automatic fuel injection. The cars were driven at a variety of speeds with the average velocity not dipping below 30 mph.

Today, that 1959 Opel is owned by Evan McMullen, who heads up Cosmopolitan Motors in Seattle, Washington. To be sure, it’s not a thing of beauty to look at, but it does elicit a comment from Mr. McMullen. “Here’s a car that was twenty years old at the time of the contest that was the product of a couple of guys in a garage. You can’t tell me we can’t do better than this with cars today.”

Indeed. With the major auto makers of the world pumping their chests with pride at mpg ratings of 25, 30, 35, 40-- one might ask why the technology of the Wood River competitions has been withheld from our roadways.

Are the automobile and oil lobbies so powerful, is the American Congress so thoroughly owned by special interests, are the proponents of greenhouse gas reduction so weak-kneed that the Wood River Question can’t be discussed publicly? And where are the American people in all this? Shouldn’t we be interested in an answer? After all, the only things at stake are our economy and maybe the ecology of the world.

[And just in case you think I’m joking, you might turn to pages 221-223 of Fuel Economy of the Gasoline Engine (ISBN 0470991321) by the Shell Oil Company, published in New York in 1977 by John Wiley & Sons.]