WEST SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – The Scuderi brothers can sit around a table like any group of siblings, teasing one another about who’s the best looking or the smartest of the bunch.

But in between those good-natured jabs, there’s lots of serious talk about their plans to ease a mounting concern of American motorists: What to do about skyrocketing gas prices.

Their idea to get the most out of a gallon of gasoline centers around an unusual family heirloom, a concept inherited from their late father that the brothers call the Scuderi Engine.

Like any engine that powers a car or airplane, the Scuderi device is an internal combustion engine. But the design drafted a few years ago by Carmelo Scuderi rejiggers how that model works, resulting in increased fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, they say.

Internal combustion engines are only 33 percent efficient, meaning that about one-third of the gasoline going into an automobile is converted into energy.

But the Scuderi Engine, which is in prototype production, has the potential to be up to 43 percent efficient, according to computer simulations done by the Southwest Research Institute, an independent research and development organization that specializes in engineering technology.

That means a car outfitted with a Scuderi Engine could get up to about 30 percent better fuel economy, the brothers say.

“Dad wanted to improve the heart of the engine,” said 54-year-old Stephen Scuderi, Carmelo’s oldest son and the lawyer for the West Springfield-based Scuderi Group. “He wanted to improve on how an engine converted chemical energy to mechanical energy.”

The Scuderis have no intention of building engines. Instead, they want to license their technology to the world’s 800 or so engine manufacturers.

The design has attracted attention from the automobile industry, and although they say they’re precluded from naming any names, the brothers say they are being evaluated as a potential licensee by a major defense contractor for potential military applications.

“We think this will change how engines are built down the road,” said Sal Scuderi, 52, president of the Scuderi Group.

But their claims also draw skepticism.

John Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Sloan Automotive Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the creation is almost certain to fail, although he admits he has not reviewed the project.

“I doubt that any kind of internal combustion engine is ever going to get 30 percent better fuel economy,” Heywood said. “I’ve done enough of this to know it’s very, very challenging to come out well ahead of the game.”

Heywood said that a car engine will be at its most efficient when the driver is gunning the accelerator, something the average motorists don’t do. Even if the Scuderis are able to increase engine efficiency, he said they’ll have to prove that those gains will outweigh the costs of mass producing a new engine.

“The next new engine isn’t going to save mankind from its energy crisis,” Heywood said

. “If they’re lucky, they might get a niche market.”

Still, the idea has attracted enough interest from U.S. Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., who is pushing Congress to give the Scuderis $2 million to help fund their prototype.

“Since we have such serious problems with our transportation system and oil prices, even a 10 percent improvement in fuel efficiency achieved by a technological advance would obviously be extremely valuable,” Olver said. “The potential gain for such a small investment is enormous.”

Building a better engine had been a longtime goal of the family patriarch, Carmelo Scuderi, but one he was always forced to put off. He served in the Navy during World War II and started his family in Springfield before graduating from the University of Massachusetts in the late 1950s as a mechanical engineer specializing in fluid and thermodynamics.

“He decided he’d rather work with his brains than his hands,” Stephen Scuderi said.

So he began consulting for the military aircraft industry, doing design work for companies like Hamilton Standard and Raytheon.

“He had two things in his life – his work and his family,” Sal Scuderi said. “He was always designing things, even when we went on vacation when we were kids. He was a true design engineer.”

When he semiretired in the late 1990s, he finally committed himself to making the internal combustion engine more efficient.

Designed by the German inventor Nikolaus Otto in 1876, the internal combustion engine works on a principal of four individual strokes where gasoline is sucked in, compressed, ignited and expelled as exhaust. Scuderi’s design revamped the firing process, dividing the four strokes between two cylinders.

The result is a “split-cycle” engine expected to produce more power. And because the tail end of the process happens at a lower temperature than in a conventional internal combustion engine, fewer pollutants are created, the brothers say.

When Carmelo Scuderi perfected his design, Stephen Scuderi – a lawyer with two engineering degrees – applied for a patent. The family then raised about $500,000 from friends, family members and personal business contacts to get the engine design verified by the Southwest Research Institute.

Soon after Southwest became involved, Carmelo Scuderi died unexpectedly after suffering a heart attack at age 77.

But his family continued with his plan, staffing the Scuderi Group full-time with Stephen and Sal, their brother Michael and sister Deborah Scuderi.

Two other brothers, Nick and Angelo, are the company’s primary fund-raisers, and have already brought in about $3 million from private investors who are helping fund the $15 million construction of two prototype engines being built by Southwest. One will run on gasoline; the other, diesel.

Mark Tussing, manager of engine design at Southwest, says unlike most other inventors who come to him with ideas to redesign the internal combustion engine, the Scuderi’s project seems to hold promise.

“By no means does that say it’s a home run,” Tussing said. “But it says enough that we’re willing to go forward and build a prototype.”

And for the Scuderi brothers, that’s been a good enough endorsement to see their father’s idea to completion.