Top Gear: Project Sipster

If we can be sure of one thing, it is that Top Gear guys will not die wondering. They decided to see if making a fuel-efficient car, that was fast as well, was really as big a deal as car companies make it out to be. So they took an old car (1981) and put a very efficient new diesel engine (2003) into it. Then they did some modifications to coax “this brick”, as they called it , into some sort of aerodynamic shape and tried to fulfill the following three criteria:

1. 70 mpg

2. 0 to 60 mph in 7 seconds

3. Cost less than $7000

Here is the final project report  [Link] and some videos for Project Sipster [Link]

On Feb. 20, TopGear.com declared war on oil, poverty and slow cars, all at the same time. We naively proposed that we could build the car that no car company could manage to build themselves. Specifically, we proposed to marry timeless Italian style with thoroughly adequate performance (0-60 in 7 seconds), shocking fuel economy (70 mpg) and humble frugality (you can duplicate it for $7,000). And we decided to build it in 55 days. In retrospect, both symmetry and our own sanity would have been better served if we gave ourselves 77 days to pull this off, but no matter.

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…

Having settled on a Volkswagen Rabbit, we really should have shopped for one that was cheaper (we paid $1,700, but should have paid closer to $0), that hadn't been crashed and didn't have a fuel tank full of rust and french-fry bits from its former life as a grease-powered hippy car. See idiot comment, above.

Maybe you have to own wrenches to grasp just how ridiculous is the idea of putting a modern (2002) engine in an old (1981) car. Putting a Jetta TDI engine in a Rabbit is an egregious abuse of the word "put." You can put your hat on a rack, and you can put a head of lettuce in your grocery bag, but try putting an elephant in your trunk. Easy to say, far more complicated to do, and odds are good something will go wrong when you try.