Video: Muscle cars meet green technology
The CBS Evening News reports on one mechanic's formula for mean, green power machines--with clients including Neil Young and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Johnathan Goodwin's hybrid auto creation looks nothing like a Prius.
It is a Ford F-450. It is 14,000 pounds of pure mean, green machine, CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan reports.
"I can run hydrogen, biodiesel, diesel fuel, or natural gas," Goodwin said.
Goodwin is a natural-born tinkerer. He started by tearing apart a lawnmower and putting it back together when he was just 6 years old.
Now, every big truck or car this self-taught 7th-grade drop-out from Wichita, Kan., works on gets more powerful, more fuel-efficient, and faster.
He transformed one '64 Impala into an 850-horsepower monster that gets 25 miles to the gallon and goes from zero to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds.
Goodwin and his team in Kansas have modified more than 100 vehicles in the past 10 years. He works on a small scale, and his modifications can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars per vehicle. And his work is leaving car designers in Detroit jealous.
"I'm not held by the same restraints that they are," he says.
Having your car green-tuned by Goodwin is gaining celebrity status. The 1984 Jeep that Sreenivasan got a road tour of belongs to the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"We've doubled the horsepower. We've tripled the torque and doubled the fuel economy," Goodwin said.
Goodwin's greatest creation to date is the LincVolt.
It's Neil Young's 1959 Lincoln. It weighs 2.5 tons, is 19 feet long, can go 160 mph. And it has zero emissions, because it can go more than 100 miles on just batteries.
"Nobody wants to sacrifice size and style to gain fuel efficiency, and there's no reason to do it," Goodwin said.
Why settle, when you can have big, beautiful, clean and green under one hood?
See also:
• Couric & Co. blog: From Gas Guzzler To Lean, Green Machine
• CNET News: Dreamforce: Neil Young shows off his green machine