For as long as America has reveled in its love affair with the automobile, its citizens have always reveled in trying to tweak every last ounce from their vehicles. Drag racers took off fenders and improved aerodynamics with differing wheel sizes between front and rear. Car customizers in Southern California put hydraulic suspensions on their low-riding hot rods to evade ground clearance restrictions when police drove by. Off-road drivers have been lifting their vehicles and increasing the aggressiveness of their tires for decades, and street racers continue to fuel a booming aftermarket in high-quality, performance enhancing parts.

But with gas prices climbing past the four dollar-per-gallon mark, a different sort of performance-focused driver has emerged: the hypermiler. Rather than chase the age-old desires for speed, power, and conquering the wild, hypermilers compete to pursue a far more mundane glory: fuel economy. The practice rose to national prominence recently after a profile of hypermiling king Wayne Gerdes appeared in an issue of Mother Jones in 2007, but similar practices and competitions began many decades ago at events like the Mobil Economy Run. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the American auto industry to see that the current fleet averages barely exceed fuel economy records set in 1959.

The concept behind hypermiling is fairly simple—employ the laws of physics to glean every ounce of power out of the increasingly precious hydrocarbons in your gas tank. Here’s a more or less complete list of the major techniques employed to achieve that sky high efficiency, but it all basically boils down to avoiding the brakes, avoiding the gas (even if that means turning the engine off) and drafting whenever possible. While competitions sometimes involve the removal of all non-essential parts, some fairly impressive results have been achieved even in completely unmodified non-hybrid vehicles.

While extraordinarily planet friendly, hypermiling isn’t always the safest means of transportation. As one mileage enthusiast in the Mother Jones article noted, comparing himself the the legendary Gerdes, “"I don't consider myself a hypermiler in this sense, because, um… I try to conform to the traffic much more than he does. There's a big difference there. I'm sure it will show in the mileage numbers.” But for many hypermilers—just like hot-rodders and off-roaders that preceded them—the advantages far outweigh the risks: less funding going to foreign oil producers, more money saved on gas purchases, and plain old bragging rights. And when it’s all said and done, there are several safe, effective, and legal tricks developed by hypermilers that the average drive can employ to get the mileage of tomorrow today.

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Photo by Rim2Rim