The Whole FUEL COST thing
I listen with interest to the segments on Morning Edition regarding the issues we consumers are now facing with the gas prices rising. Many perspectives and situations have been presented.
We have retired and moved to rural Arizona from Southern California, but when formerly in CA, I bought a 1988 Ford Festiva for $700 in 2002. I parked my Lexus SC400 (13 mpg city/26 mpg HWY) for all but highway trips and found that I saved $700 in gas in about 8 months. I still drive that car here in town.
We moved to AZ and acquired a second fuel efficient car, a ’79 Subaru Brat in 2007. My better half, Jim, retired from Ford Motor Company white collar technical job, is meticulous about running condition and emissions, and each of us now commutes 12 blocks to our retirement jobs.
Jim is in charge of fixing and maintaining all the vehicles for the small town where we live. (He complains he should be sitting on the front porch as a retiree. I point out that most boys don’t get to drive firetrucks, police cars or backhoes on a daily basis just to test how well they run. (The neighbors are now used t seeing emergency vehicles parked in front of our house for 5 minutes at a time – gotta make those Kodak moments). And that most boys have to go to the hobby store and get a box made by Revell when they want to build a fire truck. They don’t get to go to the impound lot and pick out a vehicle confiscated from a Coyote (those guys have top of the line vehicles, fairly new, extra cab with all the amenities) and just get to have them painted red, then have light bars, sirens, water tanks, etc put on them.)
We each use ¼ tank of gas a month, which we find a reasonable cost even now. I haven’t calculated the Subaru, but I drove the Festiva 263.1 miles on the last tank. I refueled yesterday at almost $4/gallon. I took 6.04 gallons to the tune of $24.09. This is approximately 43.54 miles to the gallon. Neither of these cars, however, will drive us over our surrounding mountains.
The Lexus now lives under a car cover. Although we could live with 26 mpg to travel over the mountains on either side, since we try to accumulate needs and do one big trip per month, my last town trip in the Lexus left the trunk filled, the back seat filled, the passenger seat filled, and shopping bag on my lap for the return. I had to cross Home Depot off the list before I even got there.
It did however have an AC issue that resulted in the entire system being upgraded to R-134 from R-12. (Means, if you need a charge, you pay for the whole R-134 system what you would have had to pay for the R-12 ounce.)
Let’s not even talk about driving with the dog in a sport coupe (Ruby is a new family member since we moved to AZ.)
Hence the recent acquisition of our 2003 Ford Escape.
The resilient offspring of the alliance between Ford and Mazda, it incorporates Japanese quality with the utility we need and has better city mileage and equal on highway to the Lexus, with the reliability to get us over the mountains to civilization like the Lexus could.
After some cosmetic rehabilitation to Lexus is done, it will be offered for sale. For a road traveler who enjoys orgasmic handling at high speeds, it will be a superb car.
It just no longer fits our life style.
We talk with friends in town who commute and we shudder to hear of the $1000 per month fuel expenditures. My job status is changing and I am surely pushed towards reinventing a local job and going into business training people on their new computers bought due to the new Wi-Fi service from our USDA grant.
But we are better off than most, we own our home and have no debt. Just utilities and FUEL.