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| So fuelish |
| Turning our backs on a dream car that works |
By Erik Lacitis Times staff columnist It didn't seem such an outlandish dream. After all it had already put them into the Guinness Book Of World Records Somebody out there would listen to them. Americans had already gone through one gasoline crisis in the 1970s, and now an Iraqi dictator is pushing us into another one. We couldn't be that. addicted to gas guzzlers. Some investor would see the opportunity in a car like the Avion. The Avion is a dream car that worked. This isn't some fantasy. You can see the real thing for yourself. It is built out of readily available parts. The Avian is a sleek-looking sports car with plenty of leg room and trunk space, getting its name from the distinctive: way its door opens like gull wings. It can reach speeds of 110 miles an hour. It has an acceleration of 0 to 60 in six seconds. It can meet government emission and crash-test requirements. Its inventors believe it could sell in the $15,000 range, if manufactured in volume, or $30,000 if built individually by hand. And there Is this final statistic: When using a diesel engine, the Avion can get 100 miles to the gallon (With a gas engine, mileage is 40 to 50 gallons). Try to imagine how far you could drive on a tankful with that kind of diesel-fuel savings. From Seattle to Los Angeles, from Miami to Pittsburgh, from Washington, D.C., to Minneapolis. Bill Green and Craig Henderson thought that surely someone would pay attention. Yes, surely investors would pay attention. But they didn't, perhaps because the investors understood the American car-buying public better than Green or Henderson. Why bother with the Avion when what people want are high-powered vans? So the dream car returned to the city where it was built. It is now partly dismantled, stored in a garage in Bellingham. Green and Henderson met in Bellingham in the 1970s, when they were students at Western Washington University. They had both been drawn to one of the college's most famous facilities, the Vehicle, Research Institute. It regularly makes the news with prize-winning experimental car engines and, most recently, with its Viking XX solar-powered car. That is where they learned about designing lightweight car bodies that were so streamlined they seemed to fly through wind-tunnel experiments. They built the Chassis of the Avion out of aluminum, and the body out of the same carbon fiber used to make airplane parts. Most of the other car parts were bought from existing manufacturers. The engine, for example, was from a VW Rabbit. With the Guinness record, they made it to the network news and the newspapers. Green and Henderson decided to go for it. "Our flagship product, the Avion, rivals the Porsche 911 and the Lotus in performance and exotic appearance…,” they wrote in a prospectus. "We intend to initiate discussions with established automobile companies to explore a corporate partnership…" By its nature, a prospectus has to be optimistic. Still, the two men weren't quite prepared for the underwhelming response. "Basically, they told us, 'Thanks, but no thanks,’” Green said. Michael Seal, director of the Vehicle Research Institute, would say about his former students' dream car: "The plain fact is that Americans always have liked big engines and powerful cars, when they can afford to buy them." Craig Henderson now works as a designer for an exercise equipment manufacturer in Bothell. Green lectures on architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Both men still hope someone will invest in their dream car. At what point would you start 'considering a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon? When gas costs $2.50 a gallon? $3.50? $4.50? $10? With such fuel efficiency, the savings would be in the billions of gallons of gasoline. Then no Iraqi dictator could succeed in economic blackmail. But next time you're pumping gas, take a look around. I drive a 1982 Oldsmobile that gets maybe 20 miles to the gallon. That brand-new four-wheeler might get 30 mpg. Even Bill Green acknowledged a little secret. |
