JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The group’s supercharged 1973 Corvette Stingray is sleek, muscular, fast, tight and yellow.

Yellow.

“It’s the color of corn,” pointed out Gary Porter. “The yellow Corvette seems to draw people more than you think it would.”

Which is part of the reason the Missouri Corn Growers Assoc. and Corn Merchandising Council bought it from a classic car museum/dealership and converted its carburetor to burn E85 in the first place. Missouri Corn representatives such as Porter – a board member and farmer from Mercer – have been taking the car around to events such as classic car shows, parades and last week’s Commodity Classic in Nashville, Tenn.

It was Bradley Schad, Missouri Corn director of ethanol policy, who actually found the car in St. Charles, Mo., and brought it to the groups’ attention. He said they were always hearing classic car enthusiasts, among others, blaming ethanol for performance problems in the engines of older vehicles.

“We wanted to get proactive and address (concerns),” Schad said, himself a classic car enthusiast and former farm kid.

And, what better way than to go to an extreme and successfully run a 40-year-old engine on E85 to prove problems are not from the ethanol in E10 sold at most gas stations? “We could switch any classic car out there today to E85,” Schad confidently said – if only it were federally permissible to do so.

The Corvette is only a demonstration car, however, and is allowed to burn the fuel. He compared E85, at a 105-octane output, to 105-octane pure petroleum gasoline, and said while the former is around $3, the latter runs about $9 per gallon. (The “regular” gas many people fill up with at the pump is 87-octane; 105 is racing fuel.)

Even newer flex-fuel vehicles designed to burn E85 have engines optimized to burn petroleum gasoline, Schad said – that’s why E85 gets fewer miles per gallon in that engine than a higher petroleum blend, he said. Were such engines optimized for ethanol, he believes the performance of E85 should be better.

Petroleum gasoline varnishes the components in a vehicle, he explained, sort of like plaque building up in an artery. Ethanol burns cleaner and when going through a system used to petroleum fuel, and like a solvent, can knock loose particles of that buildup to clog filters and small passageways.

This information, as well as other comparisons between burning petroleum and ethanol – all part of a handout prepared by Oklahoma State University extension from various studies elsewhere – was part of what Schad, Porter and other Missouri Corn reps handed out at the Commodity Classic when talking with passersby at the trade show.

Schad said even mechanics, car enthusiasts and others who are knowledgeable about older vehicles tend to blame the presence of ethanol in the E10 because its addition is the only difference they can see in the car’s system from how it used to perform and how it does now. They don’t consider the damage petroleum gas might have already done to that same system, he said.

The only “conversion” Missouri Corn made to the Stingray’s original engine was jetting the carburetor, which meters the amount of fuel being fed into it, and replacing what was on there with a Holley carb. Schad said a new carburetor is not necessarily required to alter jetting; it’s just what Missouri Corn chose to do.

Schad and others are used to going around to vehicle shows featuring gasoline-based systems to tout ethanol, including small engines and boat engines. The Stingray has only been in Missouri Corn’s possession since last fall, so there hasn’t been much chance yet for feedback.

But he’s used to dealing with skepticism from the small-engine crowd. “There’s some you’re not going to change their minds,” he said of trying to educate consumers on ethanol. “But a lot of people, you talk to them, they’ll listen.”

The Oklahoma State fact sheet referenced above, with its citations, is available online at http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-6015/BAE-1746pod.pdf