Ok, so becoming a fuel saving nerd just sort of happened out of necessity... just don't tell any of my racing buddies
I just wound up with a 70 mile one-way daily commute (don't ask, but yes, there's a woman involved
) Increased fuel prices promted me to make some choices... so buy a Metro I did!
I have been tinkering with cars since I was 12, helping my neighbor transform a couple of VW's into fiberglass dune buggies. For me, first it was mini-bikes and motorcycles (first drag race at age 16 on my Kawasaki 400cc 2-stroke streetbike at age 16) then building a 327cu in V8 powered Vega project that I drove to high school and part of college. As you can see, I'm a bit of a gearhead.
One of my first cool jobs (early 1980's) was to get this hybrid car to work under inventor extraordiaire William Brobeck in Berkeley, CA. side note: for the EV guys here, Bill also founded Pacific Motor Controller PMC, with Steve Post. Anyhow, although not a financial or social sucess, Bill's creation was way, WAY ahead of it's time, and I was proud to be a small part of it... but that's another story in and of itself.
I've raced bicycles, sprint karts, then went back to drag racing in '96 with some VW friends of mine. In fact, I later founded the NASA VW Drag Racing Series that I ran for 7 years at Sacramento Raceway (fun times). I built a couple vw powered drag cars, one of which won it's class at the famed Grand National Roadster show and was later featured on the cover of hotVW's magazine, kind of a big deal if your a VW guy. When not running my own car, running the series, or spending time with my family, I crewed on an NHRA top alcohol dragster team, the same team's injected nitro dragster, even crewed on a Top Fuel Dragster at a national event in 2004.
I've stepped back from all of that, parked the racecar (for now at least), gave up racing and running the NASA VW series (a good friend is running it today), and all but stopped working on other people's cars to focus on some other things.
So, beside working in the laser optics field for a living, I am sort of taking a 'life's time out'. Ummmm.... well I am already tinkering on the new GEO Metro
my car: '96 2 door HB, 3-cyl 5spd, 83k miles, California car in fair/good shape. It needs a CV joint and front brakes, but other than that she's not bad. I have been reading a lot about these little fuel mizers and am really intrigued. Can I get to 50mpg average over 52/week/year while commuting through the SF Bay area? I think so... but I'll need the help of some very experienced guys on this and other like forums to succeed