Our historian friend menno must be busy, so I’ll answer this one. Yep, Mobil held the Mobil Economy Run from 1936 to 1968 except the war years. In the 50’s the event was a big deal. Ramblers and Studebakers were among the er, champions.

By today’s standards the cars of that era got awful mileage (the top car in ‘59, a Rambler American, got only 25 mpg). And this was with all sorts of tricks, like keeping all windows closed and not playing the radio. But at least the cars were unmodified, unlike today’s NASCAR space-alien “stock cars”.

Trivia: Socony (for Standard Oil Company of New York, one of the pieces of Standard Oil upon the breakup) later became Socony-Vacuum, then Socony Mobil.

No, seriously, right now I’m on the fence between believing you should be able to post whatever the hell you want, not just because it’s your website but because you’ve been part of the force to make TTAC my first stop on the computer, and marvelling at how often other blogs come up.

Then again, as the watchdog of the car-internet community, I suppose you’re sort of obligated to keep an eye on your fellows. Especially when they do something as monumentally stupid as this. I mean – wow. Hypermiling CAN be interesting – if it’s 3AM and you’re deep in rural Alabama on your last half-gallon of gas. A three-day marathon? Not really the sort of thing that justifies a play-by-play account.

I would think the last twenty years would have demonstrated that Americans feel the same way about diesel as they do about soccer: lukewarm, at best.

Um Mr. Farago, Diesel sales have now surpassed the 50% mark in Europe. How on earth does this qualify as being on the wane?

hamstrung stateside by fuel prices
Check out recent articles in Consumer Reports, an episode of Motor Week, and a recent radio episode of Car Talk and you will find the same thing – the price may be slightly higher but the mpg savings is still greater than the price difference making diesel a fantastic alternative to regular petrol.

Hypermiling is bad enough, but a rolling roadblock of them? I don’t see this improving Audi’s image to the general public (that encounters this on the roadway).

Chase the dream, not the competition.

–chuck

Hey, how about if you occasionally ran spoof Autoblog postings of shameless promos for auto-branded trinkets and snake oil.

Two. Autoblog, especially Mr. Abuelsamid, will do anything to shill diesel.