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Most of those competitions limit the speed to 30mph so vehicle shape is not as important as drive train, tires, weight and alinement, I've built two and a half of these super mileage vehicles and if your contest allows you to coast then a drive train that allows low friction coasting is important, so is a good clutch so you can feather the clutch for starting from a dead stop, as that is where a ton of gas is burned up.
But if your task is to build the shell, then build it out of foam, glass over it and melt the foam out with solvent or cut it out by hand, two feet is not a great distance so it's just the weight of the drivers legs from the knees on down, a simple spar with a foot peg would support the feet, alot of the time tho you need a metal floor pan to comply with the safty rules, .032" thick aluminum is common and is strong enough to support the feet of a driver if it's bent in to a semi circle, use lexan for the top half with a 1/8" thick aluminum rib connecting the two and it will be plenty strong, but really, for a noise cone that has to hold up to 30mph, I built one out of packing tape, I made a foam form, stretched saran wrap over it and put about 3 layers of packing tape over that, it made a nice stiff noise cone that weighed almost nothing.
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