The moto-fanatics at Top Gear America are fed up with fuel-efficient cars that look like "lumps of cold mashed potatoes" and offer about that much excitement, so they're building a car that they say will get 70 mpg, do zero to 60 in a respectable 7 seconds and cost just $7,000.

"If we are going to stop terrorists, rebuild the polar bears' igloos and somehow turn on the global air conditioner, we're going to need much more impressive mileage and, more important, something that's actually worth driving," says David Coleman of Top Gear America.com.

No word yet on whether the car will cure cancer and bring world peace, but it's still early in the project.

Now the guys at Top Gear have access to some mighty impressive machinery, so what are they using as the basis for this project? You might be surprised to hear they'll work some magic on a - get ready for it - 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel.

Huh?



The guys chose the Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed, American-made econobox after ruling out hybrids on account of battery costs and figuring that stuffing a diesel into, say, a DeTomaso Pantera or VW Scirocco would bust the budget. It also gives due respect to the company that arguably brought diesels into the mainstream when it introduced the first Rabbit diesel in 1978.

"Volkswagen is the only manufacturer truly tied to diesel in America, so there are many parts and engine swap possibilities to choose from," Jared Holstein, executive producer and editor of Top Gear.com America told Wired.com. "Besides you can take one look around online on Craigslist and find hundreds of people willing to let you have their VW Rabbit out of their garage and off their hands for nothing."

That's about what it cost them when they bought the car in New York City. Holstein has been working with the specialists at CWS Tuning in Saskatchewan to find just the right combination of performance parts to make their super fuel-efficient Frankenstein of a V-dub fun to drive.

The plan is to dump the Rabbit's anemic 90 horsepower four-banger in favor of a 130-horsepower turbocharged mill. Look for some slick aerodynamic tweaks - designed with help from UCLA aerodynamics professor John McNulty - that will include vortex generators and a flat undertray.

"We're a bunch of VW performance gurus, and we're getting pretty geeky," said Holstein. "Our goal is to show the world that this can be done for under $7,000 and that instead of buying a new fuel efficient car it is significantly more green to reuse an old car."

The only thing they need now is a cool name for the car. Help 'em out over at Top Gear America.com.

Photos: Top Gear America.com