[Dutchdivco]

No problem, at all. Firstly, I commend and respect what you've done, working with E-85. Other hypermileagers that I've read on the web curse the stuff, and say it lowers their mileage.
Secondly, I agree with you. Anyone modifying for "Performance" (racing) is trying to make their car more efficient.So is anyone modding for economy.Its just the application thats different.
Are you familiar with Endyne, (Theoldone.com). I think the name is Larry Widmer or Widmar, sorry to him if I got it wrong. He developed "Squish/quench" technology for race cars. Because he is improving the efficiency, getting a more complete burn, he also improved mileage, which is as important in indy style racing as speed.
And finally, I can't (unfortunately), completely go back to 1965, and put myself in the place of the car makers. If I could, I would go to the oil companies and say; "You've got to make your gasoline MORE flamable. More precisely, you've got to remove the very "heaviest" fractions. The ones that only vaporise at 900+ degrees.Some of them are surviving the combustion process, and coming out the tailpipe, causing smog." Can't do that, can't get the oil companies to modify the fuel 1/2 of the equation.
I think that by the time the Govt. imposed CAFE standards on the car co.'s, they were too far down the road they had chosen for emissions controls to turn back. And, those emissions controls made it difficult/impossible for them to make changes to the engines, to significantly improve mileage. Therefore, the only place left for them to go, to improve mileage, was to decrease the load, by reducing weight and drag.Thats really the only explanation for the fact that Fleet comparisons of mileage haven't improved that much, in 50 years, even though cars today are much lighter and more aerodynamic.And, of coarse the automakers also had to deal with safety requirements.Aren't you glad the Gov't. has finally taken over the car companies! Reminds me of the old saw, you know what you'd get if you had a committee design a horse? A camel!
Actually, I still haven't made a firm decision on what I'll do about compression, when I rebuild my engine and do my mods to it.I don't think my work will be able to incorporate, in a major way, squish/quench, although I'd love to.Probably will incude Somenders grooves, which is supposed to accomplish a similar effect, and is more in my pocketbook and expertise level.Either one is supposed to enable increasing compression without detonation.And, I'll be ceramic coating everything, which should keep the cylinder cooler, which reduces detonation, I believe. Wouldn't want to go with water injection, which is the ultimate answer to detonation, as that would interfere with what I'm doing with the Palladium, I think.So, I may look at slightly raising the compression ratio. Jim