this was before oil went down $20 last week

bring back the F650

KFunk wrote:

Don't judge them too harshly... they built what people would buy. You can't just force economical cars to sellers that don't want them... it sucks that they'll be slow to react and get factories restructured though. Some of the companies that focus more on the european market will be better prepared to crank up output and sell more over here, though.

Agreed. They build what people say they will buy. How many millions of enormous SUV's are out there?

As an owner of a couple small older BMW's, the people I work with are often asking me "what kind of MPG do you get on that thing?" and "where can I buy an old car that gets good gas mileage like that?".....

... but they don't want to sell their SUV's. They just want to buy something cheap to drive to work.

Of course, the couple thousand dollars required to buy one of these mysterious "old cars that get good gas mileage" could also be spent on gas. $4000 will buy you 50 tanks of gas at $80 a tank.

And then, you have to maintain these old cars. Remember, most people can't maintain their cars themselves, so then you end up like this girl I work with --- her husband bought an old Honda Prelude, "he got a great deal on it", and didn't know that the timing belt had NEVER been changed because he didn't know to ask. So less than 1000 miles after the purchase, the timing belt disintegrates on the highway, and now they're fighting with the 1st shop they took the car to --- because the 1st shop replaced the belt without doing any other investigation, and of course, this resulted in MORE bent valves. So the 2nd shop is going to charge almost $2000 to do the necessary repairs, and they're trying to get back the $800 they paid the 1st shop to replace the timing belt.........

... wow.

And who knows if the car will ever be the same after all this work? I know what my bet is.

As expensive as gas is, I STILL see people doing many circles around the parking lot at Walmart, REFUSING to park their cars more than 3 spots from the front door, in case they have to actually WALK to/from the store --- choosing instead to keep spending the gas and time to search out that perfect spot. And I STILL see people pulling up to the No Parking / Fire Truck Lane outside Petsmart, so that Mom can go inside and spend 20 mins buying her Chihuahua's food and Harley Davidson jacket, while Dad and the Kids hang out in the Nissan Armada V8 with the engine running, AC going, movie in the DVD player, happy as can be while the cost of a barrel of oil climbs to record levels....

What do we REALLY need, to solve these problems?

Self-discipline.

The amount of resources an average person in the US consumes compared to an average person in Europe, etc is enormous. We have huge-screen TV's that use more power than tube TV's, Playstation 3's and XBox 360's for the kids that use more power than the old systems, bigger cars (more oil required to produce) with bigger tires (more oil required to produce) with bigger engines and more power (more oil). We're spoiled.

In Europe, the taxes you pay on your car are partly based on ENGINE CAPACITY --- its hunger for fuel. You can have an Escalade if you're willing to pay the extra taxes for that big engine. And by the way, you're gonna pay $8 a gallon for gas anyway.

If we had a system like that, I bet we'd see far fewer oversized gas guzzlers driving around. And people would pick the first available spot at Walmart rather than burning gas and adding to the congestion.
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-Old Skool-

Well at least we will finally get some of their cooler European cars here in the states.
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1963 Vespa GL
1966 Thunderbird (sold to buy the 2002)
1975 BMW 2002
2002 Subaru Impreza 2.5 rs