Now I’m sure none of us has ever considered stooping to the depths of depraved, degenerate and outright dangerous heads-up street racing. So allow me to create a fictitious scenario.

You’re sitting at a stop light, 1 a.m., the road is empty; you look over and lock eyes with the driver in the other lane.

With a nod of the head the race is on.

As the cross light flickers yellow you continue to size up your opponent.

There’s no doubt you’ll win. Your opponent stands no chance in his ’82 Malibu with miserly paint and wheezy exhaust.

But lo and behold, the light turns green and that pathetic primer Malibu roars to life and is off the line like a monkey on speed up a tree, leaving you in a cloud of rubber smoke.

You’ve just been had by an unassuming sleeper.

That, my friend, is an example of what happens on our streets every day. But I wouldn’t know, just a presumptuous, entirely fictitious, and unincriminating fantasy . . .

. . . with a valuable lesson to be learned! Never judge a book by its cover.

And that’s exactly the lesson hybrid and electric car manufacturers are trying to get across with their new lines of fast as hell hybrids.

Now, I know what most car people think when they see the hybrid badge on a car.

“Oh that’s nice, too bad it’s as slow as honey going downhill in the snow.”

Well, while I don’t think any car is as slow as frozen honey, they’ve got a point. Some Prius performance numbers are impotence-inspiring, to say the least.

But that is changing.

In 2006 Lexus entered its GS 450h sedan (the “h” means hybrid) in Japan’s 24-hour le Mans style race on the Tokachi International Speedway.

With an electric-motor-assisted 3.5 liter V6 engine, the GS 450h produces 340 hp and hits 60 mph in about 5 seconds.

In its class of production cars the GS 450h did very well, coming in third. And overall, out of 33 cars, it came in seventeenth. Not bad for any car on its first racing debut, and most definitely not bad at all for a car with a hybrid badge.

Next on the menu of delectable, dizzyingly fast hybrids is Toyota’s “Son of Supra.” With space-age design and rocket-like performance, this car will surely challenge the notion of what a hybrid truly entails.

Sleek, sexy, refined and sporting a hybrid badge, the new Supra will easily slide into any upstanding “green tie affair” like a Q-disguised Bond.

But lurking beneath its “Hi! My name is Hybrid” tag is a modified version of the GS 450h’s power plant. In the lighter, more aerodynamic Supra frame, this hybrid can hit 170 mph and sprint from 0 to 60 in just under 4 seconds.

But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. I must regretfully inform you that these cars can’t hold a candle to Prius fuel economy.

The GS 450h gets 25 mpg city and 28 highway. The new Supra is expected to do a little better.

No, these cars may not help save the world. But what they will do is bring a much needed dose of “smoking in the boys’ room” attitude to the hybrid market.

You see, Chevy doesn’t pour millions into NASCAR because winning the race is particularly profitable. They do it so armchair racers will go out and buy their cars because Chevy just whupped Ford in the grueling Daytona 500.

The more hybrids make their way to the winner’s circle, the more people that don’t give a hoot about fuel consumption or the environment will take notice of yet one more advantage hybrids have to offer.

And if the idea of hybrids conquering the track still seems a bit farfetched to you, just look at what Max Moseley, the head of the FIA (Formula 1 governing body), is saying . . .

“This is quite clearly something that is and will be developed for the road and all the major manufacturers are working on different systems at this time. By allowing it in F1 we will be accelerating its introduction. We’d like to do that for 2009 but must sort out the detail of the regulation with the teams and manufacturers. This will be a technology that everyone can understand, the public can understand and it will be directly relevant to road cars and a technology for the future of road cars.”

Field Palmer

Green Chip Stocks Editor Jeff Siegel, featured guest on CNBC's Green Week

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