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Many of us don't seem to be
fully aware that this planet did not come preassembled with paved
roads, highways, railroad tracks and airports. We puny little humans built
it all!
Over the eons, all kinds of inventors, came up with better and
better mechanized conveyances to get us places ever faster and
faster.
We love those car inventions
that take us anywhere and whenever we want to go. BUT - what a
mess that most wonderful feature - fast, personal mobility has created. A
nice car costs $20,000 or more; gas costs over $3.00 per gallon; most cars
only get about 25 miles per gallon, and parking in a city can easily cost
over $15.00 per day! It all adds to the frustration. On top of that is all
the stressful time wasted in traffic because everyone else loves that same
invention and has to HAVE one of their very own.
I love
my cars too!
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I still own a red Porsche
914 that I bought brand new in 1972.
It turned 426,000
miles in June 2007 and still looks like new as you can tell from the
pictures below! Detroit probably hates me for not buying a new
car every 3 years. One of the reasons I kept it so long was
because it obtained a phenomenal 33 MPG way back in 1972. To
me a car is a machine, like a milling machine or a lathe. If
you take care of it and maintain it properly, there is no reason it
won't last decades. |
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THE CALIFORNIA COMMUTER
With the immense help of now retired
dentist, Dr. Bill Long, I also built a super efficient freeway legal
vehicle named the CALIFORNIA COMMUTER that got me in the Guinness
Book of World Records TWICE!
I set two Official Guinness
World Records for high mileage efficiency with this
lightweight, streamlined, street & freeway legal vehicle.
157.192 MPG
- gasoline record - LA to SF. Just 2.87 gallons to travel 451.3
miles!
156.53 MPG
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diesel record - Anaheim, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. Just
1.68 gallons of diesel to travel 263.4 miles
while climbing 7,993
feet of elevation gains.
www.canosoarus.com/03CalifCommuter/CalCom01.htm
(The design still looks futuristic doesn't it? Those
records were set in 1980 and 1981!) |
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The 1987 Ferrari Testarossa
I had this awesome car from April 2004
to April 2006. Amazing - young girls talked to me again!
I got real tired of its 14.5 MPG and finally gave it back to my
buddy Professor Joe Valencic who owns two of them and loaned the
winged beast to me. During the interim, I was restoring the
Porsche 914 - including actually wet sanding the entire getting dull
orange red body (last painted in 1988) with 1200 grit and then
following up with assorted rubbing compound grades to a final like
new deep red polished surface. That sanding was scary! |
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What's next? How about a 125 MPG car?
I have been wanting too build a sexy,
more practical high mileage machine for daily use for quite a few
years now. The brain has been mulling this one over for a few
years! The upcoming Barrett-Jackson Robosaurus auction in
January 2008 (see:
www.robosaurus4sale.com) looks like it might well provide a
nice chunk of money I can play with, so I can finally get it built.
This will be an advanced composite, lightweight and very
aerodynamic, three wheeler. All 3 wheelers that weigh under
1500 pounds are automatically classified as motorcycles in
California. This means I will be able to legally ride in the
car pool lanes solo! As of this moment, I haven't decide if
this will be a gasoline only powered vehicle (that calculates out to
get 125 MPG at a steady 65 MPH) or a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid or a
pure electric. That decision will fall out of the performance
analysis math. |
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WHAT if I could design and build a practical
500 MPG family car?
NOT that I am that smart! Even
though this would be great way to help reduce fossil fuel usage, it
would do zero to
eliminate commuter congestion. Right now it looks like
SkyTran technology is the only thing out there that has the
potential to do exactly that!
Keep studying!
Doug Malewicki |
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