Opel & Mercedes custom & mild custom

Mercedes

Opel Kapitan 1962

Opel break

Opel Reckord P2

58 kustom Opel Rekord







Un article de magazine ou elle apparait de profil:

Opel Rekord P1


Evan McMullen of Bellevue recently rediscovered the souped-down 1959 Opel T-1 that achieved 376.59 miles per gallonin a 1973 contest. (Photo by Cosmopolitan Motors)


To achieve 376.59 miles per gallon, the Opel's interior was stripped of everything but a seat, and the top was chopped to lower its wind resistance. (Photo by Cosmopolitan Motors)


The team that built the top mileage car in 1973 narrowed the Opel's rear axle and used super-hard low-friction tires and a chain drive to save weight. (Photo by Cosmopolitan Motors)

Finally something to wipe the smug off you hybrid owners, you high-mileage acolytes, you global-cooling zealots who wash your Priuses (Prii?) with graywater while wearing reclaimed plastic fleece and hemp undies.

Don't choke on your organic soy-double-decaf-fair-trade-carbon-neutral macchiato, but how does 376.59 miles per gallon sound? Makes your Honda Civic hybrid look Hummeresque, doesn't it?

That number doesn't come from some manta ray-shaped, wind tunnel-vetted carbon fiber space car. No, it's from a chop-top, steel-frame 1959 Opel T-1 (think melting jelly bean, but uglier). And the record was set in 1973 in a contest sponsored by Shell Oil Co.

Yes, that Shell Oil, better known now as Royal Dutch Shell.



Evan McMullen, owner of Seattle-based Cosmopolitan Motors, rediscovered the Guinness world-record-setting but forgotten car in Florida.

The buzz of the automotive engineering circles in the early 1970s and winner of the Wood River Competition for the planet's top mileage car, the little Opel had been bought by the France family, owners of NASCAR, and gifted to the museum at Talladega raceway.

And there it sat, mostly in anonymity, until McMullen, 45, heard about it and made his move. He now owns the car and hopes to sell it, maybe to a technological museum at an auction in September in Indiana.

He has a few questions about the car, about its worth mainly, but the provenance seems genuine. Guinness listed it in its 1975 record book. Technological journals from the era waxed about the Opel's simple but effective modifications and engineering.

But McMullen's biggest question is why? Why didn't this technology find its way into the mainstream? Why did the car sit unremarked, unremembered for so long?

"If this is something they could do back in the 1970s, what happened?" he asked, poring over paperwork, including patents, for the car.

"Certainly in 34 years we could do something to make this work."

Especially with gas climbing and then bivouacking above $3 a gallon. Especially when its relatively ancient technology bettered the best hybrid mileage by a 6-1 ratio.

To be sure, the Opel isn't much on looks, luxury or performance. The team that built it stripped the interior of everything but a seat, chopped the top to lower its wind resistance. They narrowed the rear axle, used super-hard low-friction tires and a chain drive to save weight.

The mileage from the mostly stock four-cylinder came from heating and insulating the fuel line so the gas entered the engine as lean vapor. Then they drove the car on a closed course at a steady 30 mph.

So some of that wouldn't work in the street, McMullen concedes. But if the car were made more drivable and lost 200 mpg -- it still would get 176 mpg.

"Here's a car that was 20 years old at the time of the contest that was the project of a couple of guys in a garage," he said. "You can't tell me we can't do better than this with cars today."

So McMullen wants to see who wants the car.

And he hopes there's something to be learned about the future while looking at the past, in an era when even the oil companies sometimes responded to OPEC fuel crises by promoting conservation.

"They tell us hybrids are the answer," he said. "I think the answer, at least part of it, is right here."

The subject of countless interviews for television, radio, film and print, this is the world-famous and world-renowned Opel Experimental prototype which holds the world record to date for a gasoline-powered vehicle of its size and only mild modification from the original stock pushrod engine. This 1959 Opel achieved over 376 miles per gallon in Wood River, Illinois, in 1973!!


Featured in the Guinness Book of World Records as well as many publications (several of which accompany this car), it had been hidden from the public at the Talladega Motor Museum where is laid to waste for decades. Still clad in its original livery, it is functioning today and would make any collector, museum, special-interest hobbyist or institution proud.


One of the most significant and milestone vehicles of all time, this petroleum-driven vehicle has held the worlds’ record for more than 35 YEARS.



Byronwire:

Some folks at Shell Oil Co. wrote "Fuel Economy of the Gasoline Engine" (ISBN 0-470-99132-1); it was published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, in 1977. The Library of Congress (LOC), in September 1990, did not have a copy of this book. It was missing from the files. I bought a copy from Maryland Book Exchange around 1980 after a professor informed me that it was used as an engineering text at the University of West Virginia. On page 42 Shell Oil quotes the President of General Motors, he, in 1929, predicted 80 MPG by 1939. Between pages 221 and 223 Shell writes of their achievements: 49.73 MPG around 1939; 149.95 MPG with a 1947 Studebaker in 1949; 244.35 MPG with a 1959 Fiat 600 in 1968; 376.59 MPG with a 1959 Opel in 1973 (Photographs of the Opel, taken in April/07 are above.) Note the insulation added to the engine, (1,2) heat helps vaporize gasoline.



1973 - The annual Shell Oil Company employees contest turns out a world record for high mileage at Wood River, Illinois... A highly modified Opel of 1959 vintage sets the record with 376.59 miles per gallon - World record mileage is now well over 2,000 miles per gallon from very specialized vehicles designed to do one thing - get the most mileage possible...



The chemically correct air/fuel mixture for total burning of gasoline has been determined to be 15 parts air to one part gasoline or 15/1 by weight. Changing this to a volume ratio yields 8000 parts air to one part gasoline or 8,000/1 by volume. The system of the present invention vaporizes liquid fuel before the fuel enters the engine. Theoretically, a homogenous mixture can yield gas mileage in excess of 300 miles per gallon. The world record for auto gas mileage was sent in October 1973 by a 1959 Opel station wagon with a highly modified engine. The car traveled 376.59 miles on a single gallon of gasoline during a Shell Oil Co. contest at Wood River, Ill.



Le site web de référence: http://www.opel-p1.nl/custom/testcar/Shell%20Opel.htm

Opel Kapitan 1962













Voiture qui a été vandalisée en 2006 puis restaurée

An "Opel record Olympia 1960 which is a well Custom. A little info on the rebuilt. Kadett units, Ford rear axle. Koni dampers, by chairs forward. The engine is a Opel which is uppborrad and strokad and turbokonverterad. Approximately 250-300 hp. Getdrag box 5 0. New soup pump, and a mass otherwise. Checked car June 2010 has not been driven since its pga distributors which la of. Has still not can the but sell it to someone who wants and may keep it to use. A true stylish and vitriolic car. Have never been from being driven with it. Yesterday ruskigt good. Shall I out and speed up the, I attach to a higher sum. Is in need of Svensson car so EV change car with features 2001 or newer. // DANNE

2 ou 3 jolis modèles, mais ce n'est pas toujours de bon gout   

Bon feeling !