So I have a few idea's, I am a bit of a gear head and a cad designer so these are things I have pondered through to some extent.
Turbine electric hybrid,
Turbine engines are much more efficient at converting fuel to energy, and run on many fuel types.
Dodge once proved that turbines could be used in automotive applications but the government pulled the plug at the time (60's or 70's, I cant remember... Mostly cause I wasn't alive) The car had major issues anyway due to a mechanical gearbox and the spool time turbine engines need especially when compounded by mechanical lag.
The basis for my idea is to use four rahter large electric engines, a battery and some capacitors as a buffer (For the time it takes the turbine to spool up) an electric motor would be placed in each wheel well and provide the most sophisticated traction controll by simply metering which motors get the juice when and how much.
In theory it work like this, turbine is idle, you step on the gas pedal, the capacitors/small battery power you unrelentlessly as the turbine spools simultaiiously until the turbine generator has reached a point where it can power the electric engine beyond the point of demand and recharge the batteries, once batteries are recharged the turbine generator will return to "trickle state"... This will work well with regenerative brakes as well.
Fast burn engine,
This idea is a hell of a lot more complex than the last idea so you will have to bear with me as there really is no engine like this in existance.
The theory works like this, there are three hollow screws, one male screw in the center and two female screws on either side, imagine a twin screw blower with two female screws, only the screw direction is reversed... There is an intake port and a "burn chamber port (More on that later)" on the upper right and lower left side of the enigne the screws are housed in as the screws are spinning in oposition to eachother. There are exaust ports and burn chamber ports oposing the intake ports on the oposite side of the engine. If your not lost yet, I will explain the cycle system:
Air fuel mixture is ignited inside the burn chamber, at this time on the right side of the engine the exhaust port is open, the rear burn chamber port is closed the front intake chamber is closed and the front burn chamber port is open allowing the burned gasses to travel through the screws and spin them. At this time the left side of the engine the intake port is open, the front burn chamber port is closed, the exhaust port is closed and the rear burn chamber is open, this causes the left side to supercharge the left burn chamber untill the ports switch... Not sure if this would be fuel efficient, but it sure would be badass!
Exhaust extractor/a way to make a four stroke into a two stroke.
This a simple one, basically you run a backwards turbine off of a gearbox to "suck" all of the exhaust out of a cylinder/wankle ect... If you create enough suction you can produce a powerfull enough vacuume to pull air fuel mixture into your cylinder/wankle ect... Think of this as a backwards supercharger...
Why the hell are intake/exhaust manifold backwards?
So basically this goes back to when we were using carburators, our fuel systems were gravity fed and V8 engines had to have the intake in the center. On an american V8 we like to use cross plane crankshafts, which makes sense since you get a perfect ballance that way (As opose to a flat plane or 180* crankshaft) unfortunately this crates a horrible exhaust system layout and the only way to do it correctly is with the old "Bundle of snakes" like seen on the old GT40's (Sounds soooo good) I propose the with the cost effectiveness of using plastic intake manifolds and since we are using high presure fuel injection systems and that fact that with only one exhaust manifold it will reduce costs... Future V8 engines (If there are going to be anymore) Should have a single properly sorted exhaust system in the valley between the heads and two intake manifolds on either side...
I have thought these things through much more than this but unfortunately lack the patience to get further into detail :P
Thanks for reading,
Seth