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It was all done in the spirit of the great car race tradition of old and the long road stretched all the way from the US to Central America. The only thing unique about it was the fact that all the participating vehicles ran on vegetable oil power, or to be more precise, SVO or straight vegetable oil.
This 4500 mile race went through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras on to Nicaragua then Costa Rica. And April 1, 2007 saw history of a kind being created in automobile fuels.
The fact of the matter is that most vehicles can run on vegetable oils with a little bit of engine modification. Of course, if the vehicle doesn't have a catalytic converter you could just have a strong odor emanating from it, rather like something cooking but other than that, the engine runs and it is very cheap to run.
The engine modification does not take more than a couple of hundred dollars to do and this low-cost and low-tech solution could well be what the future needs, not just in terms of price but in terms of environmental issues as well.
What this race set out to do was to draw people’s attention to the fact that biofuels could be very practical to use and especially so in developing countries.
The race had five participants. No, they were not young kids with a sense of adventure but teams that wanted to make a difference to the world. They were Quest for the Golden Grease, Team ZERO, Greased Lightning, Quantum Heap and The Frying Burrito Brothers.
Two of them were sponsored by the company Grease car who fitted them out with conversion kits and with filtration systems on board. The event was purely for charity. At the end of the race, the vehicles were donated to some of the local groups.
All along the way, the aim was to garner support for alternative fuels especially vegetable oils which were available in plenty and could be filtered and reused.
One of the participants in the race was Suzanne Hunt and she was part of the team Greased Lightning. She happens to be the director of the bioenergy program for the WorldWatch Institute, while her partner Jean-Phillipe Denruyter from Belgium is the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Bioenergy Coordinator.
So not only did the race make a statement for looking at environment-friendly alternative fuels, it did it with a lot of splash and panache.