Nugent 1; French 0

[fabsroman]

Skyline,

No offense taken. If you NEED a truck, I have no issue with it, unless you also have the money to afford a small car that you can use when you do not NEED the truck. I have one client that drives 2 hours each way to work in his GMC 2500. He drives the truck 2 hours to pick up his trailer of tools at his rental house and then he performs work in neighborhoods around his rental house. In the long run, he would have been much better off keeping his truck down there and buying a Ford Focus that gets 34 mpg and using it to commute. Bought a Ford Focus for my dad recently to use as a work car and it cost $12,800. If my client gets 17 mpg out of his gas engine 2500, that would be pushing it. Most of the drive is highway mileage, so lets assume that it is 260 miles round trip. That is a little over 15 gallons of gas in the truck and a little over 7.5 in the Focus just for commuting. The difference is 7.5 gallons per day which at $3 per gallon equates to $22.50 per day. Assuming he works 5 days a week and 50 weeks out of the year, that is a savings of $5,625 per year. The Focus would pay for itself in 2 years, and if you count the wear and tear saved on the much more expensive truck, the Focus would pay for itself even sooner. However, try explaining this to my client.

Now, how about all the people (e.g., soccer moms) I see driving these huge SUV's around? How often do they need that huge SUV? They could probably rent a SUV when they need to go out of town and the rental would be completely paid for with the gas savings of the smaller car.

Sad thing is that most people are not number/money savy.

Brithunter,

Getting 27 mpg out of a Jeep Cherokee is unheard of around here. My in-laws own one that is 10 years old with 100,000 miles on it and they get 20 mpg on the highway if they are lucky and that car is in great shape.

Europe has a bunch of fuel efficient vehicles because there is a huge demand for them. When I was in Italy in 2001, gas was $5 a gallon and it cost over $50 to fill the tank. Not too far off from what I paid today to fill my Taurus (i.e., $43.50). I am truly hoping that Ford comes out with some seriously fuel efficient vehicles by the time we are in the market for a new car. The Fusion is supposed to come with a hybrid motor in 2008, so I will see what kind of gas mileage that yields. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.