Nope, requires several hp to move a car at 70 mph. Mower carb set up for a TINY engine. Could he coast a car downhill, add a couple of hp, and reach 70? Not in any practical way, but yeah, theoretically. Meaningless accomplishment, though.
If you believe that I have a one owner bridge in Manhattan that i will sell you cheap .
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Some people believe if is on the internet or TV it has 
to be true.
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This is why people believe in Big Foot. They have no idea how to evaluate the crap evidence they see. the 100mpg carb has been debunked for decades…or the Hydrogen fuel…but it still comes back around for a new group of fools to believe it.
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Good point. Internet suggests about 35 hp to maintain 70 mph against wind resistance in a standard-shaped car. My lawnmower is 6.5 hp, so seems unlikely that carb would be able to supply air and fuel flow enough for 35 hp. But some lawnmowers have higher hp engines, so guessing there are some lawnmower carbs that could provide 35 hp. Especially if carb modifications are allowed. Biggest practical problem is finding somebody willing to purchase a 3500 pound car with a 35 hp engine.
If the late-night radio program’s topic is bigfoots, I’m probably listening … lol …
BBC’s 1970’s tv series comedy “Good Neighbors”, the diy’er needed to transport stuff from house to distant garden allotment, so he made a sort of car powered by his rototiller. Didn’t go 70 mph though 
That must be Danny’s lawnmower … lol … Danny of “Counting Cars” tv show.
My bil opened the hood on his restored 56 ford truck. Fuel injection. I would guess though that the carb for my twin cyl lawn mower is close to a small single barrel auto carb, but this is stupid
As I said. Mpg is not rhe whole issue.
Any physics experts out there? What is the estimated 0-60 mph accel time for a 3500 pound car powered by 35 hp?
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70 hp cars (MB 240D, etc) would take 20 - 30 seconds, so say several minutes.
It seems like if you had a 3500 lb car, you could figure this out (approximately) by measuring how quickly it decelerated from 70 mph to 65 mph when placed in coasting mode. How exactly that would be calculated from the measurement, no idea.
George, you’re what’s known as an ‘idea man’…
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I think my vw was 36 hp but pretty light.
Gas in stations north and south of mpls is $2.54 today. No places in mpls I know of that are close. But, that’s a good price 25 miles from mpls.
Notice the screen name. Sounds like the snowman under yet another alias.
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We had a MB 240D in the shop once, we measured the 0-60 times with a sundial. A car with half that HP you could probably use a calendar. 
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My 1957 Karman Ghia had 36 hp and would do 70 mph eventually but at that speed it got 35 mpg. My 2018 Nissan probably weighs twice as much, is much bigger, has 3 times the hp, and gets better gas mileage.
I agree. I had a 400cc carbureted motorcycle and consistently got about 60 mpg, even when cruising on the highway. If I couldn’t get over 100 mpg with a 400# motorcycle, how could a 4000# car do it?
I have always been under the impression that the method to determine horsepower ratings were different from the US, the UK, Germany, and France to name a few…
My ‘63 VW had about 40HP engine and I swapped it out once and also had to pull on another occasion to replace a clutch and I could not pick that engine up by myself. However, I had a 16’ runabout boat with a 40HP Mercury Outboard and I could pick that engine up…
I was stationed in Naples, Italy, in the late '70s and a few of my friends had the Citroen 2V, an air cooled 2-cylinder car and it was called the “Deux Chevaux” in French which translate to two horses as it was rated at 2 HP for tax purposes… Not sure what it real HP was but the guys with that car joked that they could not take it on the AutoStrada (the interstate…) since it was slower than the toll takers were walking to work…
Warning, trip down memory lane ahead, Detour to next Posting to avoid……
Now, when I was an early teen, my friends and I had a weird “uncle” (no relationship to any of us–actually a neighbor…) who was a kid at heart who helped us sup-up our go-karts and mini-bikes; disableing speed governors, installing larger carbs, building fancy exhaust (to make them louder…), and on one of our go-karts he fabricated a manifold to mount a 2-barrel car carburetor. Other than the notoriety or having this carb sitting high on this 5-HP go-kart engine, it was just a “cool” factor, I do not remember it running any faster, let alone any change any fuel economy (which was not a concern…).
Don’t you just love a trip down memory lane?
European market cars often had higher hp than US import versions in the '70s and '80s because of US emissions regs, along with smaller US markets for the expensive high-output models. This created the ‘grey market’ car era, where shops would import especially desirable versions and federalize them.
The differences in actual hp measurement are small (1 ‘PS’ in Germany, for example, is 0.986 hp in the US), and all advertised hp ratings for imports are converted to the US system.
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