Turbo Boost and FE

[GasSavers_Hal9000]

Gollum
Our views are definitely only a few degrees apart, but that's the nice thing about polite conversations. You have the opportunity to really get into all the nitty gritty little details.

Personally, I think you could do the MS conversion (I'm assuming that it's on the 280) for more like $400. I picked up a broken MS box and repaired it for under $100 including the cost of a stimulator to test it. Fuel injectors, rails, and harnesses can be had on ebay for a song, as can throttle bodies, O2 sensors, and all the other parts you need. Enough people have done conversions on the old datsun straight sixes that you should be able to find the "grassroots recipe" on the msefi forum. I put all the parts together for my mercedes (except for the manifolds which I have to custom fabricate this winter) for under $1250. That's to convert the car to efi and build a custom turbo system AND modify the engine internals to put up with the roughly 125 hp/cylinder that it'll be producing.

Regarding how small the manufacturers can go and keep the public happy. Look at the cars in the UK and other European countries, India, Japan, China, and the like. That's the direction that we're going to end up going whether we like it or not. There's a reason why the average fuel economy in the US is in the low teens but in the high 40s in Europe. The fact is that Americans are behind the times in terms of average fuel efficiency because we've never paid the "real" price for transportation at the pump. Most European countries build their transportation/road taxes into the price of gas, so it becomes a real pay-per-use tax and people can see what it costs to drive a mile. If America did that I think the shock would make many of us change our habits substantially. (Or we'd lynch the local legislators!)