Took my drivers test in one of these. On any serious hill it struggled to do 30-45mph.
Our family had one of those and my youngest brother made 800 mile round trips in “Smokey” to mining school in Rolla, MO routinely getting high 30s and low 40s MPG.
That is also the VW diesel engine that the EPA lab in Research Triangle Park NC converted to spark ignition and ran on methanol without changing the compression ratio, as described in their very educational 2002 cientific paper. Diesel cycle and Otto cycle energy efficiency was within 1% of each other.
That's very interesting. If you have any links to those tests I'd love to read them. Thank you
The unique EPA engine used for this work is a turbocharged, PFI spark-ignited 1.9L, 4-cylinder engine with 19.5:1 compression ratio. The engine operates unthrottled using stoichiometric fueling from full power to near idle conditions, using exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and intake manifold pressure to modulate engine load. As a result, the engine, operating on methanol fuel, demonstrates better than 40% brake thermal efficiency from 6.5 to 15 bar BMEP at speeds ranging from 1200 to 3500 rpm, while achieving low steady state emissions using conventional aftertreatment strategies. Similar emissions levels were realized with ethanol fuel, but with slightly higher BSFC due to reduced spark authority at this compression ratio.
