Detroit's Days Are Numbered

Television's TopGear team recently completed Project Sipster.

The goal was to create a car achieving 70 mpg, 0 to 60 in under seven seconds, and a cost of only $7,000.

In a perfect world, we would have started with a 1974 Volkswagen Scirocco. This paragon of low-rent sex appeal could easily swallow the turbodiesel Volkswagen engine we planned to use, and it's far more aerodynamic than the brick we finally settled on. We rejected that plan because we feared the bureaucratic hurdles involved in registering a car that had been converted from gas to diesel. We have since been informed by countless readers who have easily registered diesel-converted cars that we're complete idiots. That would explain a lot of other things as well.

In a similar vein, several locals have already investigated our new book SVO: Powering Your Vehicle with Straight Vegetable Oil.

If you're tinkering with a conversion in your garage--Wikipedia notes that older diesel Mercedes are popular for this--let us know how it's going!