With Nissan having provoked anger in Dan Panoz and DeltaWing Technologies over the intellectual rights of the design of the DeltaWing race car, you might think that the whole idea is due to dead end sometime soon. But it seems that, bitter as DeltaWing might be, it is gearing up to take the car in a whole different direction, a DeltaWing road car. The idea behind the car is to use extremely lightweight construction and aerodynamics to produce fuel economy beyond what hybrids can get.

The idea has worked extremely well in the racing version of the car, although good fuel economy or not, it hasn't translated into actually winning a lot of races. The cars use gasoline engines, but the company says that basically any kind of propulsion could be used, including hydrogen or CNG. The road cars are planned in both two-seat and four-seat configurations. It is a bit difficult to imagine how the narrow front of the racer could translate into something that could carry four people, but DeltaWing says it can, and that such a car could achieve a combined 57mpg without hybridization. Sounds promising.