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as a physics ignoramus, I have to ask:
is it even possible to trade horsepower for efficiency? Or is that not a sensible question?
I thought that if one were making engines more efficient (that is, if engines produced more useable energy for a given amount of gasoline, less energy wasted as heat), one could have less horsepower, and greater gas mileage. Is this a completely incorrect notion?
Of course, this does not take into consideration the weight of the chassis/body/everything else. I assume if a smaller, lighter engine of greater efficiency is mated to a very light chassis/body one can get quite high gas mileage for a given horsepower..
