Power Hungry Americans

[Virtual Bob]

> According to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/, "big displacement" engines with
> lots of HP are not necessarily inefficient.  A Camaro or Corvette (18 mpg
> city, 27 mpg highway) gets better fuel economy than an S4 or even my 130hp
> '90 80q.  Even a Viper has roughly the same fuel economy as a '90 BMW 535i.
> ...

That's because they cheat. As I recall from magazine reviews on, I think,
Camero and Corvette (or was it just Camero?), they have impossibly high
4th and/or 5th gear and at least on auto-trans ECU it's programmed to go
to those gear ASAP. That's how they get the awesome high milage in
government testing, since DOT testing doesn't involve "push the pedal to
the metal" so ECU can try to shift auto-trans into the said high gear
ASAP. The manual-trans testing procedure is probably similar.

Make no mistake -- if they get driven by a very enthused enthusiast, 
they'll quickly show their gas-guzzling nature.