Jory Squibb, a Camden mechanic, has a pet project that is putting America’s top carmakers to shame. In one year, Squibb designed and built a gas-powered car that gets up to 105 miles per gallon, and he did it for $2,500.
Squibb’s car, Moonbeam, has been cruising Camden’s streets and been featured in car shows across the country since 2005. Squibb and Moonbeam were featured in a PBS NOVA special on cars of the future hosted by car radio personalities Tommy and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk fame.
Though Moonbeam is street legal and functional, no one can confuse it with a luxury sedan. To achieve such staggering fuel efficiency, Squibb kept extra space and weight to a minimum, designing it for two travelers, at most.
“The passengers need to be on friendly terms,” he says. “It’s better if the second passenger is a child.” Despite its size, Moonbeam can handle every season of Maine weather and zip comfortably at 45 miles per hour. More importantly, Squibb can spend as much on gas to drive across the country as some SUV drivers spend on one fill-up.
In the Blood
Squibb, himself a product of Detroit, is a self-professed car lover. Geographically, he had no choice. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, “a Detroit boy was expected to have designed his first hot rod by the time he turned 16,” he says.
But Squibb is also a product of times that were a’changing, and he considers himself an old hippie, always looking for a way to combine his love of vehicles with his ecological impulses.
When the ’70s oil embargo struck, he began to convert Volkswagen Beetles into electric cars, which he affectionately called “Voltswagens.” Each car was powered with eight golf-cart batteries that could travel 25 miles before needing to recharge. Squibb entered one of his creations into an alternative vehicles race up Mt. Washington in 1975. His Voltswagen was one of two vehicles that made it to the peak.
“I still have the trophy,” he says. “A gilded turtle.”
A Scooter at Heart
Although battery technology has taken a quantum leap forward since the mid-’70s, Moonbeam’s fuel efficiency is a result of good engineering, not technological advances. In fact, the car’s design is more indebted to the past than the future, based on archived designs for micro-cars that cruised the streets of Europe shortly after World War II.
Micro-cars are usually three-wheeled hybrids of motorcycles and cars. In Moonbeam’s case, Squibb fused the parts of two Honda motor scooters together and designed a body to go over it. Much of the engine comes straight from the motorcycles.
He chose a motorcycle engine over a car engine to get the most gas-efficient motor possible, and since Moonbeam’s frame is so light, it still provides enough pep for the car on the highway. Although Squibb is a born tinker, he’s glad Moonbeam’s motor system comes largely from an engineered motorcycle motor rather than one he improvised himself.
“When I’m putzing in Moonbeam 50 miles from home, I’m so glad my drive train was designed by hot-shots in Tokyo instead of a shade-tree mechanic named Jory Squibb,” he admits.
The motorcycles that gave birth to Moonbeam were very fuel-efficient, but by putting them together into a three-wheeled car, the fuel-efficiency improved. Squibb admits he has no idea why this happened.
Although Squibb’s creation has a space-age look to it, its design is steeped in bureaucratic practicality. Moonbeam has three wheels because four-wheel vehicles by law require more safety features, which can be cost-prohibitive for adventurous mechanics.
“We prototype makers are, by some degree, trapped by three wheels,” he says. Squibb needed to work closely with a sympathetic vehicle inspector who helped pass Moonbeam for road travel. The insurance company was more forgiving, assuming Moonbeam to be no more than a modified motorcycle. Squibb sees no need to dissuade them from this fact.
The Next Moonbeam(s)
Not content with one super-efficient creation, Squibb has formed a team called Maine Automotive X to design another 100-mile-per-gallon vehicle. The team, composed of fellow mechanics and alternative-vehicle enthusiasts, hopes to compete for the 2009 Progressive Direct Insurance X Prize of $1 million for the best-designed super-efficient vehicle.
Part of the motivation for creating another car, Squibb says, is to fix the design flaws he’s discovered in Moonbeam over the past three years. “The minute you set the wrench down for the last time, you start to imagine improvements.”
The team’s four-wheel entry, Dirigo, is designed to be more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing than Moonbeam while still achieving the same fuel efficiency with battery technology.
Unfortunately, their quest has hit a pothole. While the state of Maine recognizes Maine Automotive X’s nonprofit status, the IRS considers the $1 million prize too profit-driven an incentive to qualify. Without the IRS’s blessing of nonprofit status, Maine Automotive X can’t use $30,000 in direct contributions, roughly two-thirds of the team’s overall budget for the car. The team is looking for more business sponsorship, but Squibb doubts they can raise the extra $30,000 or complete the car with the remaining funds in time to compete.
But in true pioneering fashion, the group plans to complete the car anyway no matter how long it takes, because “we are gearheads,” Squibb says, “and that’s what we do.”
Squibb also has been networking with people throughout the world who are building their own Moonbeams. He’s posted the car’s plans on his website for public use, complete with suggestions for improvement.
“I love seeing a picture of a guy working on his car in Spain with my plans tacked up on the wall behind him,” he says.
Squibb sees hope in their interest. A true lover of cars, he wants to find a way to forestall the extinction of the personal vehicle in the face of oil shortages and environmental devastation.
“If we’re careful, we can buy some more time,” he says. Enough time, perhaps, for one more Detroit kid to gear up his first hot rod and take to the road.
