I'm still waiting for the full list of official results to post [Mark Long is working double shifts this week], but until then I felt compelled to put something together for a recap. I've been waiting for more pics to become available and now we have them. The first seven are from Ronny Kienhuis, who drove the '72 Citroen SM. The remaining pics are Ben's, but now with captions added.
I am very pleased to show you the winner of the Historic Class of Economy Run III. This is Bill Clark's 1957 Metropolitan Hartop. This car has spent the last ten years in either a trailer or in the Norwich museum so when he started driving it there were some problems. Lot's of them. He worked tirelessly until every detail was taken care of. What he ended up with is a car that is now running better than it has in the last 33 years. His goal was 37 mpg [last year's number with his convertible]. How did he do? Well his attention to detail in car prep and his driving earned him an impressive 46 mpg and a first place in class. And that was on bias ply tires folks! Well done Bill.
Here we can see Vlad Saakyan on his 2003 Suzuki Svs650. He was the only bike that the weather did not scare away this year. Vlad rode carefully and kept his revs below 4,000 in sixth gear on the course. He logged 64 mpg with his 650cc sport bike. Behind him in this picture is overall high mpg man Chang Ho Kim in his '89 CRX HF. Check it out, he had every body seam sealed off with painter's tape. He had to climb through the window to keep the seal intact while stopping to pick up his card at the check point.
More check point action. At the furthest point in the 104 mile loop, we had every driver stop and pick up a card. This proved that they drove the entire distance and did not take any short cuts. If you look closely, you can see Chang in his yellow shirt, picking up his card at the base of the stop sign.
This is Carl Germain gettting out of the oldest car in competition. His 1950 Studebaker Champion business coupe was able to achieve very impressive 29 mpg. This is a big car with a 160 cubic inch straight six flathead, a three speed overdrive transmission and 4.56 gears!
From the driver's seat of Ronny's Maserati powered Citroen SM. These 3,500 lb. grand touring cars generally get about 15 mpg. Ronny got twice that!
Here I am
trying to fill Ben's CRX. All of the Civics were difficult [and in Ben's case impossible] to get a consistent fill up the the rim. No matter how many times I squeezed another shot of fuel into the neck, it would slowly sink in and disappear. We shined a flashlight down the neck and kept trying. This went on for five minutes until I gave up before possibly causing a problem. We don't know where the fuel was going, but it was likely filling up the evap system and charcoal canister. No other cars had this problem. Someone with a factory Honda manual needs to scan the page where it shows the picture of the filler neck and vent hoses for the CRX. We ended up using the data from his MPGuino for his result of 82 mpg.
Richard Vedder appears to be passing Ronny here, as he is on his way to his best ever result of 59 mpg in his 2000 Ford ZX2 S/R.
And here's a rather unassuming looking contestant right? Looks can be deceiving. Last year's events proved that pound for pound, diesels rule the roost for economy. This is Martin Deschenes 2000 VW Jetta TDI. Martin drove 7 hours one way, from Quebec City in Canada to run at our event. He clearly has the long distance award. Soft spoken Martin is a very knowledgeable and talented hypermiler. How do I know? Because he won the Diesel/Hybrid class going away with 90 mpg! Our previous record for a diesel was 71, set by Jonathan Bartlett last year. Nice job Martin!
For those wondering what my '77 Datsun B210 was able to muster after the flurry of activity in my garage all week, how about a solid 77 mpg! Not to shabby for a carbureted car. There's more left in it too. I'm not done yet.
During the awards under the pavillion, we had each driver get up and tell us all about their cars. This was really interesting as we got to hear a little about each driver's car and what their mods were. This is Matt Herring. He had the best Prius mileage at 76 mpg and finished second in the Hybrid/Diesel class.
We tried to line the cars up for a group shot but there were too many. Here's one batch of them. Talk about diversity eh? There are 1950's car mixed in with hybrids!
Here's another grouping. There were still others as well. This event will be hard to top. The roof was blown off all of the previous records.
But I'll be working on the October event shortly. I am planning an all new route. Stay tuned.
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