It's astounding that the automakers are still trying to peddle vehicles that are so grossly inefficient or completely mismatched to the owners' needs. Automakers & their marketing gurus have a social responsibility to take the lead in reshaping how we look at cars. They shaped our views about big, powerful cars being better and now they owe it to us to apply their moneygrubbing fervor to making people feel okay about smaller, less resource-wasteful cars.

But still, it kinda blows me away that consumers continually make many of the same crappy choices - but bellyache ever louder about the consequences of those poor decisions. As we make out way to work in the mornings, Dede & I still see lots & lots of people who you'd otherwise credit as being fairly intelligent using big honkin' quad-cab trucks & monstrous SUVs as single-passenger commuter vehicles. And then they're inexplicably grumpy when the time comes to pay the $80 to fill the tank each week!

Wait a second... 1 + 1 equals something?!! Incredible.

MPQ* is what I use since everything I drive is old, ranging from 10 to 40 years.

*Miles Per Quart

Back in the Pleistocene era, when I was still married, we briefly contemplated the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz 240D sedan, three years old, 95k miles, the previous owner a physician in rural Oklahoma who had retrofitted a second fuel tank for those long hauls. Filling both tanks would require 45 gallons of diesel, which would presumably be good for somewhere around 1300 miles per tank. Then again, at the current price for diesel, at least in my neighborhood, we'd be looking at $210 to fill it up.

We didn't buy it, mostly out of fear of maintenance costs, but partially because zero to sixty on this thing was measured in fortnights.

I am sure it is wishful thinking or someone would have done it already but, wouldn't it be interesting if someone decided to use all that room in the larger vehicles for fuel cells and batteries. It would be good to the next generation of larger vehicles be fossil fuel free...