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Do not feel too sorry for yourselves :-) I had a real eye opener some weeks ago. Had a lesson for some statistics software we use on the job, and the guy had some car data (weight, country of manufacture, engine size, fuel consumption etc.) to fiddle around with.
To make a long story short: american cars looked gruesome concerning fuel efficiency. BUT when we started to do different correlations, you could clearly see that FE correlated best with weight; groupings could be seen due to engine size and fuel type, but that was minor compared with the weight correlation.
Europeans (and japanese) car makers were always building low-weight cars (at least compared to US street cruisers). That is the whole difference.
Nuances will be added by heavy-duty AC, sluggish 3-speed auto trannys etc., but this is all chicken feed compared to the weight which must be accelerated.
So just go and look for the lowest weight american-made car, and you will have a winner... well, at least a reasonable competetive car concerning FE.
so long,
tinduck
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