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I thought I'd revive this thread with a discussion I had with my grandfather yesterday. He was telling me about a 49 Pontiac 4 door sedan with a huge 473ci motor with relatively low compression. He said that the cars engine was so huge that it never had to work very hard and that even at a good clip (no speed limits in the 50's) he got almost 30mpg with it.
That has me thinking- what if one were to build a 2 seat car as suggested with a mid engine set up, etc but with one rear wheel so that it could be classified as a motorcycle, AND have less rolling resistance. My next door neighbor (who used to race motorcycles professionally in the 60's and 70's) told me of a V8 engined motorcycle with a gm powerglide transmission (2 speed) and a shaft drive rear end. He said you really had to hold on to that thing!
So what if the same style of drivetrain were used? 2 seats, inline with each other, then the V8 engine (run of the mill V8 would be more than sufficcient with a powerglide auto trans behind it (which can be converted to "manual" if desired) and then a re-appropriated car rear end modified to run just one wheel? It seems to me like it would have no problem going very very fast, but also that at low throttle settings with fuel injection and all that it would get *very* good mileage, unless you had your foot into it all the time.
So, has this been done already? What do you all think of such a thing? Parts would be cheap and easy to come by, very few custom pieces would need to be made with the exception of the drive shaft and the rear end axle shafts (you could shorten the tubes and install a spool yourself).
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