Can some out-of-work car-racing engineers save the planet?

In 1901, a no-name hick from a farm in Dearborn, Mich., built a race car. Well into the 1960s, when Ford challenged Ferrari in the European endurance race known as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, automakers lavished money on their racing teams, believing they’d earn it back in expertise and sales.The link between motor racing and the cars in our driveways turned into a mantra for the industry: Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. The company has entered these “Very Light Cars” in the Progressive Automotive X Prize, a $10 million international competition to make a car that gets 100 miles to one gallon of gas. In his autobiography, Henry Ford preached that weight was the chief enemy of strength and efficiency: “Fat men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as though dead-weight fat increased speed!” On a recent visit to the Edison2 shop, Kuttner dashed back and forth between the racks of components that his team had designed from scratch to shave precious ounces, grabbing lug nuts and assemblies and asking me, with a toothy grin, how much I thought they weighed. Americans buy big, heavy cars thinking they’re safer than lighter, more agile cars; we want a car to have an unlimited range when two-thirds of us commute 15 miles or less each way to work ; we prefer to pay for our cars on the back end, in fuel costs, instead of up front at the car lot.