Man I remember being younger and reading that hotrod article like 10 times. When it came out I believed with in 2 years, that was the future of cars, all cars.

But what happened? For all the lame excuses that could come up, from auto manufacturer's laziness to oil company conspiracies, you'd think SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE would after 20+ years figure out how to mass produce an engine like the one he made.

There is clearly money to be made on making an engine with the stats he provided. Yet no one, not even greedy mega multimillionaires (who could hire Smokey and a team of 10 engineers) could figure out how to mass produce it and make conventional engines as a thing of the past?

Was it too good to be true? Was hotrod lying to us? Why don't we see more of these cars around now? What went wrong?

Maybe it's getting older that makes more skeptical but something tells me we are missing the whole story about that 230hp iron duke.