Simon Hauger and His West Philly High School Team Win with 100+ MPG Run

[Mad Dog]

We received more good news from Simon Hauger and his team of students running a modified GTM in the annual Green Grand Prix, held recently at Watkins Glen race track.


The West Philly High School GTM in action at the 2012 Green Grand Prix.

The team won their class averaging just over 100 mpg on the track on Friday driving and 92.5 mpg on Saturday for the road rally!

Simon reports: “The car ran great and just gets a ton of attention where ever we take it.”

Two weekends ago Lockheed Martin sponsored the team’s GTM as a part of their exhibit at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC.


The Green Grand Prix-Winning GTM is a modified version of Factory Five Racing's flagship supercar. The GTM is normally powered by a 400-650 hp GM LS corvette engine.

Lockheed was the title sponsor of the event and used the GTM as a headline feature. About 300,000 people visited over the three days.

“I’ve never seen that many people at a show before. We were totally swamped the entire time we were there. The response we got was amazing,” said Simon Hauger.

Congratulations to Simon and his team on another impressive victory!


Simon Hauger and members of the West Philly High X-Prize Team.

Factory Five Racing

[Someday I Suppose]

Dave, that is just unreal and totally awesome. I happened to be down at Mark Dougherty's shop Monday and he has the car there now, it was a pretty cool treat to see the car in person, though it does sound a bit more like a tractor then a standard issue GTM. Very cool project though, Simon and the class have a ton to be proud of.

[crash]

Freakin AWESOME!

Kudos to them for making it happen, and for also drawing attention to our cars by making it happen with a GTM!

[Mark Dougherty]

yep
the car was a blast to build with the High school. the numbers they got are ligit. It is so odd to run the car on the track for three hours and put only a little over a gallon of fuel in.
It just keeps getting better with this team. wait till you see what they are doing next.
Later
Mark D

[riptide motorsport]

That is too cool!!

[Pierre B]

Where can I found out how this group accomplished this? This news clip makes no mention of the powerplant or other modifications that made this remarkable achievement possible.

[Mad Dog]

We have posts on West Philly in our What’s New archive from the old website that we're working on getting posted on the new site. We’ll get the West Philly High stories posted soon.

The Factory Five GTM built by West Philly High School lead by instructor Simon Hauger competed in the 2010 Automotive X Prize challenge. The team did some reworking of the vehicle after the competition, and it’s now powered by a Volkswagen TDI engine running on biodiesel coupled with a hybrid system.

They were also honored by Popular Mechanics with the 2011 Breakthrough Award. Click here to read the PM write-up.

[Oppenheimer]

OK, so when is someone going to make a movie about this story? I recently watched this inspiring movie about a guy from West Philly that started a swim team with inner city kids in the 70's. There is also this movie that had Halle Barry and Jim Belushi called Race The Sun about some kids from Hawaii that built and raced a solar powered car in Australia. They had to really juice up the solar car story to make it movie worthy, and the car still locked like a cockroach.

The West Philly GTM story does not need any Hollywood embellishments. Plus LOOK at that car. That photo at the top of this thread, there is your movie poster. Hot looking race car built by high schoolers leads dowdy lookin' Pruis and Volt in an economy race. The Today Show did a story on these kids some time ago, but their GTM was not built yet, the only cars shown in the piece were some electric Ford Focus or something they built (though the GTM go-kart was shown). Imagine a Today Show story redux where they say we told you about this story before, but now there is something new to report. These kids won the Green Grand Prix 2 years in a row, beating cars like the Chevy Volt. Now lets see their car that got ~100 MPG... and driving out onto the plaza comes the GTM.

I'm picturing stints on Leno to follow (he drives the car). Buzz gets generated, movie producers get interested. Will Smith is from West Philly, lets get him interested. His kids could play some of the students in the film.

How do we get more buzz behind this story? Lets start an email campaign to the Today Show to try and get them to resurrect the story. Here is the email address:

[email protected]

[Mad Dog]

Hey guys,

I got some of the the previous posts FFR has done on the West Philly High GTM up on FFR's new website. Click here to check them out.

[Kalstar]

Oppenheimer.....What an awesome idea!!!

[Mark Dougherty]

Oppenheimer
what a great Idea.

this GTM was built at the High school.
I am honored to have helped them with the project.
It used to have a 70 HP electric motor in the front driving the front wheels. 300 something volt system.
The electric system was removed with all the batterys, to be used in another project coming soon. As many know if you dont use the batterys they will die.
The car now only runs its VW 1.9 turbo diesel.
it weighs 2050 lbs, with a full tank of fuel all 5 gallons.

The milage achieved was on the diesel alone. It will top out at about 130 MPH do the 1/4 in about 13.2
It has taken a long time to get the package dialed in.

This school projects runs on donations alone the more they raise the more they can do with it.

Later
markD
the traveling builder

[Fraser D]

I am good for a couple of T-shirts, posters etc.
Maybe the art dept can get involved as well.

[NicksPapaw]

THAT'S what I want to do with an 818. I sure would like to know the technology behind the numbers. Mark? Can you share anything here with us?