There’s tons of talk about horsepower levels. We’ve crossed the seven hundred horsepower levels years ago, we have hypercars that are in four-digit territory, and it must be said: most of those horsepower are simply present for the entertainment of the driver only. It doesn’t take much horsepower to actually be competent on the Interstate. The Chevy Cruze Eco that I use as a daily beater uses only 138 horsepower but has no trouble whatsoever getting to illegal speeds. You only need a handful of horsepower to maintain highway speeds, based on aerodynamics and weight. You might need as little as 15 horsepower to maintain the status quo if you’re driving something light and sleek. Or you might be driving a 1984 Dodge van and you’ll need every last horse you can hook to the wagon. It’s weird like that.

When the second gas crisis hit in the 1979, a run on technology happened. People had still-fresh memories of what happened in 1973 and didn’t have much faith in fuel being a common substance for much longer. You started to see vehicles like Dodge Omnis and Ford Escorts getting converted to full-electric vehicles using lead-acid battery technology. It’d function, but heavy lead batteries and an optimistic 60-mile range didn’t add up to anything worth remembering.

In 1980, “hybrid” was a way to describe a plant, not a car. But Briggs & Stratton decided to give it a shot with the 1980 Hybrid, a car that was based on a Marathon Model C360 van chassis, some Volkswagen Scirocco body parts, a tag axle to support the weight of twelve six-volt batteries, and a 18-horsepower two-cylinder, four-cycle air-cooled gasoline mill. The electric motor and the engine could be operated independently or in tandem and had a range that could scratch 280 miles if you stuck to city and town driving speeds. The Hybrid could do 68 miles per hour, but realistically this car was built for the days of the national 55 mile per hour speed limit. In that sense, it worked…and worked a hell of a lot better than a lot of other offerings.