[norwaypinesavage]

The title is a bit misleading, because it ignores significant fuel economy penalties that are built into vehicles due to government regulations. Remember the early days of air pollution regulations which required automobile manufacturers to blow extra unburned fuel into engines, and then burn up the excess in catalytic converters, in order to decrease nitrous oxide emissions? Those were the days of 8 and 10 mpg passenger cars.

If you look at fuel economy before this time, and then compare it to current fuel economy, which uses three-way (simultaneous oxidation of unburned hydrocarbons and reduction of nitrous oxides, requiring oxygen sensors and computer controlled fuel ratios) catalysts, the fuel economy improvements haven't been so great. If you include this technology requirement, the fuel economy improvements have been enormous.

[NavVet]

Of course, if you consider the much faster speeds and much greater weight / cargo capacity of modern vehicles you could rephrase the headline to read.

Modern cars can move more than a ton at twice the maximum speed of a model T and still burn less fuel than Henry Ford’s first car.