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engines like the Big Block, Cobra Jet and Ramcharger. Acceleration was all that mattered, even in family cars that never made it to full throttle.
• The 427-cubic inch Chevrolet Tri-Power was the siren song of the gearhead, sending Corvettes roaring down the highway at up to 140 mph.
• But now, thanks to government regulation and gas-price gyrations, the motors that move the nation's cars and trucks are shrinking.
• Whether they drive hulking pickups or family sedans, Americans are increasingly choosing smaller engines that use less fuel, especially four-cylinder models that offer more horsepower than was possible just a few years ago.
• More than half the new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. through May had four-cylinder motors. That's up from 36 percent in 2007, and it's the highest sales percentage since 1998, when the J.D. Power and Associates consulting firm started keeping track.
• ___

• BOSTON (AP) -- Federal Aviation Administration employees felt political pressure to approve a wind farm planned off Cape Cod and did so amid internal disagreement over the best way to stop the turbines from interfering with radar and compromising airplane safety, according to FAA documents obtained by the project's opponents.
• The FAA ultimately decided that the key to safety was modifying the existing radar system at a nearby airfield, rather than ordering an extensive replacement, as recommended by its technical operations team. A replacement could have jeopardized the long-awaited Cape Wind project, which aims to be the nation's first offshore wind farm, by delaying it three to four years.
• The FAA's approval was overturned last year by an appeals court. In an email sent after that decision, an engineer worried about pilots of certain small aircraft flying near Cape Wind by sight, rather than using flight instruments.
• "I don't think air traffic could keep a low flying, search-only (plane) from running into a wind turbine," he wrote.
• Other documents show FAA workers repeatedly referring to the high-profile project's political implications, some characterizing it as "extremely political" or "highly political." Part of a May 2010 internal presentation reads: "It would be very difficult politically to refuse approval of this project."

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