Hybrid. Efficiency. Not exactly the words you want to be thinking about when you look to purchase a new car and rightfully so. Since we were teenagers, the automobile has meant excitement, speed, adventure and all that America stands for: freedom (or as Cadillac puts it: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit). Some of us take it a step further and spend our weekends at the local race track reaching speeds most people only dream about. So, when we sit in our econo-boxes outside the local Shell station pumping regular gasoline @ $4.03 per gallon, buying something that will put a lot of wind in your hair and a huge smile on your face is the farthest thing from your mind. I’m here to tell you that your next car may not only be significantly more efficient than your current car, but it might might be pretty quick too!
Let’s start this discussion out with an American icon, the Chevrolet Corvette. Since 1953, the Corvette has won the hearts and minds of America with it’s sporty and muscular styling, extreme performance and bulletproof reliability. It’s a super car that you can use every day, and hundreds of thousands Americans do. So, how can I contort the Corvette into wearing a “green” badge on it’s sleeve? Let’s say you pop down to your local dealership and pickup a standard Corvette coupe or convertible, you’re looking at a 6.2L V8 engine. Assuming you want a little more gusto under the hood, a 7.0L Z06 with 500 stampeding horsepower is available as well. Looking at equivalently performing Ferrari’s or Lamborghini’s, you’d expect highway mileage to top out at 18 MPG and city driving would sink into the single digits. The standard Corvette hits around 18 MPG in the city and real-world mileage of around 30 MPG on the highway. Even with the Z06 you’re looking at around 16 and 26 in city and highway, respectively. Mind you, the Z06 does top out at over 200 MPH. Not to mention, the Chevy LS based engines are some of the most reliable on the planet. You could trot down to your local dealer today knowing that you’d be one of the fastest on your block, yet still keeping the environment and your pocketbook in mind. Do a car search by mileage here.
Next on our list is a small company based out of Hethel, Norfolk, England by the name of Lotus. Since the early 60s, Lotus has been creating cars with the mantra, “less is more”. From the very first Lotus Mk1s and the famous Lotus Elan (weighing in at a spritely 1600lbs) to the most modern Lotus Elise (tipping the scales at approximately 2100lbs), Lotus knows the #1 way to make cars perform both efficiently and quickly is to remove all the extra weight you can. Now mind you, this doesn’t mean you remove the safety as well. With a solid aluminum monocoque (a chassis type used in most racecars), the Elises can take a jolt as well as most cars on the road, but with the performance an Elise gives you, it’s party trick is it’s amazing avoidance ability. With roughly 1/2 the weight of most cars on the road today, the Elise is a modern marvel in lightweight engineering. By the way, did i mention that you’d be driving a car that does around 30MPG and does 0-60 in well under 5.0 seconds?
The next car is a particularly popular modern “vintage”: The Mini Cooper. Whether you buy a brand new Mini, a new Mini Cooper S or an old Austin Mini, you are bound to max our both your miles per gallon and smiles per gallon. These amazingly fun and fast microcars are large enough to fit you and a loved one, packed for a long weekend and able to get your there in judicious style (with the basic Mini Cooper getting close to 40MPG and the S getting in the low 30s). They have passed safety ratings consistently with the highest ratings, but more to the point, the Mini urges you to go Motoring and take the long way home (the really long way). The Mini’s legendary road holding ability lets you hit a full .9 lateral Gs if properly setup. A stock 2008 Corvette hits .93 lateral Gs. How’s that for a giant killer? There are millions of Mini owners, new and old, and I can bet you that you’ll never come across one that regretted their purchase.
The final car on my list is an oldie but a goodie. It’s a car that’s no longer made, but even legends fade into the past from time to time. The final car on my short list for fun and economical cars is the Honda CRX. It’s another car that goes by the Lotus mantra and espouses this by a curb weight of between 1700 and 1900 lbs. (depending upon the year and spec). The 1984-87 ‘HF’ spec. car hit a whopping 49 and 54 MPG cycles for city and highway driving, respectively. Even the “performance” Si version and tuner versions are seeing well over 34 MPG combined cycle. The CRX is a very popular car for club racing and weekend drivers schools, which lend themselves some street-cred as exhilarating drives.
As the fuel prices continue to rise, I’ll be adding to this article more cars, both new and old for all budgets. So, please stop back again and we’ll try to have more cars for you to read about. Thanks for stopping by!
Tags: car performance, cars for sale, chevy corvette, fuel efficiency, hybrid, lotus
