How about...... this

[SakoTGrimes]

So for the last months I had been working at the worst job ever, and to pass the time and make it more bearable me and my friend coworker would think up the most extreme automotive ideas possible. Most were completely idiotic (such as the 20 ton SUV that has 4 V8s and no brakes) but every once in a while we came up with something good. Like this....

 

You take a car like an EA71 hatch (My original idea was to do this to a Toyota Tercel but my Tercel is just too nice) and you put it in a vacuum mold thing to make a big plastic shell out of it like an RC car. Now you build sort of like a rollcage for it, with bars in all the normal places a car needs to have strength. If I actually did this I would like to use titanium as it would be super light, super thin and super strong (not to mention super $$$.) More realistically aluminum or steel could be used. Simply put hinges and latches where you would need doors, hood, hatch, etc.

 

Please keep in mind I have no idea where you would actually find a plastiform thing big enough for a car or enough money for this, but.... just a crazy concept I have.

 

Now you fill the entire thing with Styrofoam which would give the body some strength against wind and would also make a really good sound killer. Carve out the inside leaving a few inches or so and make another plastic shell, this one on the inside of the body. So now you've got a Subaru shaped shell that weighs like 200 pounds maybe? Mount your seats, EA71 and FWD 5MT to the frame, fuel cell in the back and of course paint it so it doesn't look like its made out of Styrofoam as well as a hundred other little things to make it usable. Register it just like a Subaru with a parts car VIN and drive it! I estimated that if I did this to my car I would get 70+ mpg (up from its current mid-40s). But now I believe that with how light the car would be, in addition to modifying your driving style, and, if you wanted to go all out, streamlining it for much improved aerodynamics 100+ miles to a gallon could easily be attained. If you look up hypermilling you can see that people are already getting insane mpg with normal cars. Anyway since I am now pretty obsessed with fuel economy, yet still missing Subaru ownership I thought this would be cool to do. A more practical approach would be to just gut the car for weight and block up the grill a bit and drive it like I do to my car now.

 

What do you think?