Interested in a car that can get 70 miles per gallon and run from zero to sixty in under 7 seconds? Yeah, so are we. How much do you want to pay for it? Top Gear America thinks that $7K sounds just about right, and it wants Italian styling to boot. Impossible? Not so fast. The crew at TG, which is a separate entity from the British blokes that you see on the tube all the time, have set out on a project to create just such a beast. The bones of the project, known as Sipster for now, are based on a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit, which was in fact styled by Italian design house Giugiaro. In place of the original miserly yet underpowered diesel engine will go a fully modern oil-burning TDI from VW. After the powerplant is in place, UCLA aerodynamics professor John McNulty will take a crack at making the upright Rabbit a bit more slippery. Should be fun to keep tabs on.

Read on at http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/02/20/top-gear-america-begins-work-on-70-mpg-project-car/

And visit the TopGear US site at http://www.topgear.com/us/features/more/we-build-a-70-mpg-car/