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Robert -

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls

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And look - that $1.5bn of taxpayer dollars sent to Detroit didn't go to waste. The PNGV appears to have hatched the Prius as well. Probably the first-gen Insight too.

Thanks, Al Gore, I love my car! But we would have saved more gas with higher CAFE standards instead.

That's been my understanding. The Prius and Insight didn't just happen in a vacuum :

Battered from all sides, Supercar sputters along - Page 3

Shortly after the Supercar project was launched in 1993, Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's biggest automaker, asked the U.S. government if it could join the effort. The United States said no, that Supercar was a project only for GM, Ford and Chrysler. A major goal, the government said, was to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry. Toyota was one of the companies Supercar was trying to beat.

Some Toyota officials today downplay that rejection, saying Supercar in no way affected company decisions. But others at Toyota say that being excluded clearly motivated the automaker.

"There was a real good chance they could succeed and put us at a competitive disadvantage," recalls Michael Love, a Toyota regulatory affairs manager.

About the same time the Supercar project was announced, Toyota started designing its own ultra-efficient car, company officials say. The goal was not as bold as the 80-mile-per-gallon Supercar, but it still was ambitious: 55 miles per gallon, or twice the mileage of the average car.

Work was conducted under strict secrecy at Toyota's Higashi-Fuji Technical Center, a sprawling research complex at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. Twenty-hour days were not uncommon for engineers there.

CarloSW2