Henry Ford — the inventive American guy who made cars with soy and hemp and declared ethanol would be the ultimate fuel — would have been outraged.

Not a single American car company got a chassis into the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's list of the Greenest Cars.

Neither, for that matter, did any of Europe's automotive manufacturers.

Instead, Japan and South Korea controlled the list.

The top car was a compressed-natural-gas-fueled Honda Civic GX. The others are all either hybrids or regular internal combustion cars burning gasoline.

In order, the greenest ones after the Civic GX are the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic hybrid, Nissan Ultima hybrid, Toyota Yaris, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry hybrid, Honda Fit, Kia Rio and Rio 5, Hyundai Accent and Honda Civic.

The winning cars all have four-cylinder engines. Five have manual transmissions; seven are automatics. Their engine sizes range from 1.3 liters (the Civic hybrid) to 2.4 liters (the Camry hybrid). Most are in the 1.5- to 1.8-liter range.

Many of the cars — notably most of the hybrids — have that odd feature that they get better city mileage than highway. In part, that seems to be because when they are in electric mode and sitting still in traffic, they're not burning any kind of juice, either electrical or petroleum-based.

The green car list comes from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and you can find information on their list at www.greenercars.com.

A lot of folks measure the environmental friendliness of vehicles purely by their gas mileage — 12 miles per gallon not so good; 55 miles a gallon lots better.

The ACEEE process includes reviewing fuel economy, emissions, and pollution from manufacture, which is calculated from vehicle weight. The theory is that the heavier the car is, the more stuff goes into it, and the more natural resources are consumed and pollution created.

Cars were ranked on a 1 to 100 list. The best car got only a 57; the worst, a 14.

The cars with the lowest green scores were mostly European names, although four American cars got in there.

The Volkswagen Tourareg got the lowest score of all, followed by the Mercedes GL320 CDI, Lamborghini Murcielago, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Bentley Arnage RL.

The lowest 12 have engines from 6 to 12 cylinders, in sizes from 3 to 6.7 liters. They're all automatics.

If you have a question or concern about the Hawaiian environment, drop a note to Jan TenBruggencate at P.O. Box 524, Lihu'e, HI 96766 or jant@honoluluadvertiser.com. Or call him at (808) 245-3074.