Aerodynamics and fuel efficiency

Read how the owner of a Toyota T100 pickup increased his efficiency 28% with no modifications to the engine.

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=870

Very cool.

I had a bed tonneau on my old pickup - it reduced fuel consumption by about 10% at highway speeds. Around town it made no difference.

A low bed cover can make a whale of a difference, but you would be surprised on SOME
pickups, having the tailgate up or down doesn't matter. It depends on the length of the bed, and the height of the cab. A friend ran a very controlled experiment on his short be Ford Ranger a few years ago, and he proved that for HIS truck, gate up or down was not different. Yep, we are both aerodynamicists....that is what geeks do sometimes!

There are more things that can be done, but that guy was doing pretty well.

One especially interesting thing is that the belly pan and wheel skirts seemed to make a bigger difference than the bed cover. I think I would like to try belly pans on my cars.

I ran across a guy who put a bug shield on his S10 Chevy and it knocked 5 MPG off his his milege. Took it off and got the 5 back.

The belly pan on the MG would be good enviromentally as well but all that leaked oil sloshing around in the pan could start to affect handling I would think :D