Gasoline prices and the vehicle you drive

[Crosley.In.AZ]

So......... is anyone thinking of a small car for the next 5- 10 or 15 years?

I must admit I've been looking at smaller vehicles  for about 2 months now.

The new Federal energy bill has some tax credits on the hybrid cars in 2006.  Many hybrids come with a premium added to thier price tags.

IF you do not change your driving habits the fuel mileage is not that great in a hybrid or small car....

The way people are driving here in the metro Phoenix area , you would think gasoline was $0.60 a gallon

[entodad]

So......... is anyone thinking of a small car for the next 5- 10 or 15 years?

I must admit I've been looking at smaller vehicles  for about 2 months now.

The new Federal energy bill has some tax credits on the hybrid cars in 2006.  Many hybrids come with a premium added to thier price tags.

IF you do not change your driving habits the fuel mileage is not that great in a hybrid or small car....

The way people are driving here in the metro Phoenix area , you would think gasoline was $0.60 a gallon

I've already switched.  Last fall I rebuilt a 92 geo metro. New pistons, turned crank, rebuilt heads, new clutch, water pump, oil pump etc. etc.
it paid for it self in less than 3 months after I rebuilt it.  Now with fuel at $3.00/gallon, I am reaping the rewards even more.
I get 45 mpg with the air off and about 41 with the air on.  EPA rates it at 50 mpg highway, but I have yet to get it.  Before I was driving a suburban, and getting about 15 mpg.
I am currently looking for another metro project car, but so is everybody else, so the car price has jumped about  double what it was just a few months ago.  :cry:

Doug

[Jokester]

"I must admit I've been looking at smaller vehicles for about 2 months now."


Smaller than a Crosley??                    

[58 Yeoman]

I've been riding the Goldwing almost exclusively for the last couple months.  I used the Ranger PU last weekend to haul some firewood (mpg sux), and will use the old minivan when the weather gets bad; it gets about 22 mpg.  No more car payments for me, so I'll have to pay a bit more at the pumps for what I've got.

[tomslik]

well, i still need a full size Pick up to haul the trailer when needed but the HD is getting rode even more...


keeping an eye out for a cheap winter beater  though...


wife drives a scion now ,gets about the same milage as my bike

[bucketmouth]

Well I saw a program on tv in the last couple of weeks about hybrids and what the true cost is.
Higher initial cost,higher insurance or no insurance due to the high cost of repair and poorer resale.
The only benefit is if you want to be green.
Where did I see that,well I saw it in the U.S. when I was there.
We're paying $1.16/litre that's 4 litres per US gallon.
:x  

[C9]

Right now we're not thinking of a smaller car, but I wouldn't mind a 4 cylinder Ranger for my own use.

We've cut back on our driving to an extent where our gas bill was not too bad, but with the higher prices we'll just have to tough it out.

We're combining as many errands into one trip as we can and that's the biggest help with the main family vehicle.  (2002 Ford F150 SuperCrew with 5.4 liter.)
I don't plan to part with it for a while, it does the things we want to do and it's Sweetie's favorite vehicle.
Mileage with it is 15 mpg with an easy run to town and in town.
It dips down to 14 mpg now and then.
About 17 mpg on the highway and it gets 18 mpg when I hold the speed down - which is the big secret.

A tank of gas on the roadster is lasting about a month.
I run errands in it when I can and do the Saturday morning doughnut run most Saturdays.
We take part in the occasional rod run and car show and that's about it.

I look for the oil industry and the infrastructure to bounce back pretty fast.
Housing for the oil workers and port people will come back fast as well.

New Orleans is the most important port in America and it's not only America that will suffer, so will other grain buying nations of the world if the Mississippi is silted up as was reported.
If grain from middle America can't get down the rivers, other countries will be affected so it really is a world catastrophe.

I've seen some people from other countries crowing on other boards about America's gas prices going up and we're just gonna have to get used to it.
We will.
Americans do well when things get tough

The part these guys are missing is that there is a worldwide competition for oil and they're in the competition as well - which means their gas prices are going up too.

[Crosley.In.AZ]

As mentioned the hybrids are not really cheaper to operate when a person looks at all the costs for long term use.  I've been looking at the turbo diesel VW stuff.  I had a diesel VW Rabbit in 1981. 42-45 mpg in town with NO power.

A Crosley driven in modern traffic  is a life / death thing.  If you wish to live , don't drive the Crosley. I've driven my Crosley to a couple of car shows some years back.  KRIPES...... people were ready to shoot my a** for the slow acceleration of the car

C9.......Sweetie's favorite vehicle and Janice's are the same , although our super crew F-150 is a 2001.  Janice really loves the truck.  We do need a truck as tomslik mentions , but the bulk of our driving could be in a smaller vehicle...

As Phil mentions car payments,  our trucks are paid for.  So   does a person sell a truck for 10K ( round numbers here for example) and buy a new/used car for 22k.  I have then spent an additional 12k on a car to save money. LOL .. IF I buy a smaller car , I don't want an older one that I need to maintain / rebuild weekly, I have too many other things to get done on the weekends


My wife and I often carpool to work, she cannot ride the 1800 into work with me in her business clothes.  Changing clothes at work for her would be an ordeal,,,, a BIG ordeal

[C9]

My granddaughter reports gas is $6. per gallon in the Alabama town where she lives.
Gouging for sure, but what are ya gonna do?
There's talk of price caps and the state of Hawaii has already done a price cap on gas.
It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

The panic seems to be starting.
People are trying to peddle their large vehicles and get a more economical one.
(My bother-in-law did that one a few years back and sold me his like-new, low mileage 77 Ford 3/4 ton 4x4 with extra's, winch etc. for a righteous price and bought a POS Olds with 262" engine. The money he saved on gas didn't make his car payment.)

I'm seeing on other hot rod oriented boards that more multiple carburetion setups are for sale than has been as well as a lot of talk about better mileage.

This may be a good time to pick up a project or completely built car.

Look for the oil companies to post killer profits at the end of the fiscal quarter . . . no surprise there . . . and they wonder why we don't believe em.

In the end, gas will go up, come down a bit, stay there, we'll get used to it and work around it.

I drive my 462" Buick powered roadster quite a bit and a tank (15 gallons) lasts me for a month.
I run errands in it, hit the occasional rod run on Saturday nights and almost always hit the Saturday morning doughnut run with it.

Even so, if Saturday night driving costs, say $7. and it used to cost $5. I'm still gonna do it.

[Cword]

Around our house the other car (other than the rod) has been a small car (Toyota Corrolla).  
For all of my working life (since 1982) I've ridden a bike to work.  Even when I had a job with a company car, I left that vehicle at the office and rode the bike in from home.  
The bike has nothing to do with the cost of gas, or the environment. The bike is another hobby,  which I enjoy,  and enables me to have a lot of fun at each end of the day.  Cost savings in gas, parking, insurance etc are just a bonus, a bonis that lately grows every day.

I'm fortunate to enjoy the bike as much as I do.
mike

[Uncle Bob]

Jay, you always seem to make good sense.

With panic comes some "interesting" decisions.  I see a guy trying to unload his Expedition, and of course the value just dropped about $5K.  And the gas sipper he's planning on just went up about $2K for the same panic reason.  Seems to me he could have bought a lot of gasoline for the $7K swing.  But then, financial planning isn't a strong suit in panic mode.

I'm leary of government controls on gasoline pricing though unless it's VERY short term to prohibit profiteering.  The last time we did that, in the '70's, the oil companies made even more money than we'll see by year's end (inflation adjusted).  Multiple stock splits were very common from '73-'76.  Yet after decontrol in 1981 the priced dropped about 40% within a year (seems odd that nobody was criticizing the oil guys for that .  Funny what competition and no government guaranteed profit will do.

I can hardly wait for all the politicians to start crowing about all the things they think should be done to "solve" the problem.  

[BFS57]

Hllo;
my thaught is, I wonder what the people in the middle east are paying pr gallon for the same stuff we use?

I'm still driving my '57 chevy every day!

Bruce

[enjenjo]

If your car is paid for, and reasonable dependable, even 10 mpg would be cheaper than car payments for most drivers.

You have to figure the cost per mile, and gas has to get pretty expensive to offset the cost of car payment, more expensive insurance, and so forth.

Back in 1980, I was driving a 66 Olds 88, a $50 car, getting about 12 mpg. My buddy had a 78 Olds Cutlass, paid for, and since it only got about 16 mpg, he traded it on a VW diesel Rabbit. I told him he was foolish, and proved it on paper, he was spending more than twice as much per mile than I was to drive to work.

Two years later, his wife wrecked the VW, I bought it from the insurance company for $400, spent $200 fixing it, and drove it 280,000 miles. I liked it so well, I bought a diesel Toronado for my wife, got 180,000 miles out of that.

[1FATGMC]

To put things in perspective I wish my only worry was how much more it was going to cost me for gas to drive to work or to car shows knowing my paycheck was going to be the same at the end of the month as it was at the beginning of the month.

In the four days of this week and over 1000 miles from the hurricane we have had maybe 15 tourists in the store and I can only think of 2 that actually bought anything.  This is normally our best month of the tourist season.  I feel the tourist season and our paychecks are done for the year.  9ll killed it and this buried it.

Still as bleak as it is for us I can't imagine 1,000,000 people or more that right now don't have a home to go to and/or a businnes or job to return to.  They can't even cash a check.  They are completly dependent on what someone will do for them and it isn't going to get any better for them in the near future.  Man what a mess.  My heart goes out to them.

c ya, Sum

[EMSjunkie]

well, i still need a full size Pick up  :

I still need a full size pick up just to haul ME around  

Vance