Professor Bob's "Fun with Historical Stuff"

 The 1970's were a bad time for the auto industry in America. Due to rising insurance rates, emissions regulations, and rising gas prices; the age of the muscle car came to an end in 1972. 1973 came and things continued to get worse with the OPEC oil embargo which brought not only high prices at the pump, but shortages as well. Detroit was still making mostly large lumbering vehicles with thirsty engines. The few economy cars such as the Ford Pinto, the Chevrolet Vega, and Volkswagen Beetle offered improved fuel economy, but not enough. The rather spartan VW barely achieved 30 miles per gallons when babied.  Congress tried to stretch the gas supply by enacting a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour to better fuel economy. But the problems persisted and a solution evaded everyone. That is when a stranger burst upon the scene with a new company and a new idea. The stranger was named Geraldine Elizabeth "Liz" Carmichael, and she announced in 1974 that her company, the

     In today's world, we seem to see hybrid gas and electric vehicles everywhere. Even the famous performance minded Porsche came out with various forms of hybrids for their line of vehicles recently; from smaller cars all the way up to their larger SUV line. However, this was not the first time Porsche had tried to power an off road vehicle with a hybrid drive train. Porsche actually tried to do it twice in the 1940s.     In 1942 Ferdinand Porsche was battling with the larger firm of Henschel for a Wehrmacht contract. Impressed by the work done by Porsche on various smaller vehicles such as the Kubelwagen and KdF Wagen; later known as the Volkswagen, Hitler was willing to give the designer more opportunities. So in May 1941 Porsche was given a chance to design the ultimate off road vehicle...a tank. In the 1940's, the performance of engines was much better than it had been twenty years before, but were still rather anemic given the tasks they were asked to do. So big tanks