MPG-o-Matic was founded by Daniel Gray, best-selling tech author, lifelong automotive enthusiast, and breakfast serial entrepreneur. A child of the sixties, Dan grew up with a love for cars that knew no bounds, other than his wallet. "It was all about muscle cars, back in the day. I'd sit at the kitchen table, eating bowl after bowl of Quisp and Quake, while flipping through dog-eared copies of Hot Rod and Road and Track," said Dan. "The American dream was simple. Just pump in five bucks of high-test and the throttle was wide open."

True to form, Dan's first two cars were ragtop Pontiac GTO convertibles that he fixed up and painted. Coming of age in the era of the first gas crunch in the '70s had a fantastic benefit ... those old '60s muscle cars had fallen out of favor and were cheap and plentiful. "I bought my first Goat for $800 and the second for $350, he said. "Of course I could barely afford to keep gas in them, much less restore them properly."

Flash forward thirty years or so, and we're still dealing with an energy crisis. Strike up the Talking Heads ...

"How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house (that costs thousands upon thousands to heat and cool). This is not my beautiful wife (that refuses to give up her gas-guzzling SUV) ..."

With those old treasured GTOs long gone, and impossible as it was for Dan to make the case to his wife to trade in the SUV for a vehicle that delivered reasonable gas mileage, he decided to take a different route ... by creating a new web site devoted to the topic of fun-to-drive fuel efficient vehicles: mpgomatic.com.

MPG-o-Matic is Dan's second stab at publishing in the automotive realm. "In the late '80s I published Banzai Wire, a newsletter for Suzuki 4x4 enthusiasts," said Dan. "Banzai Wire was a crazy idea, and just my luck that Consumer Reports came out with the Samurai rollover story as we launched." The publication ran its course over the next few years, eventually folding after Dan and his wife sold their Suzuki Samurai in anticipation of their first child.

"I couldn't see her bouncing around eight months pregnant in that four-wheeled pogo stick," he said. "So we got practical and traded it in on a Honda Civic sedan. That's when I began to get the gospel on getting good gas mileage."

To be continued ...