Hello Folks -

Some of the discussions on the board recently got me to thinking about "miles per gallon."

First of all, this is NOT a rant about the cost of gasoline these days. To make my position very clear, over the fifty years that I have been licensed to drive a motor vehicle, and that includes this morning when I filled up on the way home from the grocery store, gasoline has probably been the least expensive of all commodities used in our society on a daily basis.

As one simple example, when I was in high school in the late '50's, gas cost about $.25-30 / gal. ( My senior year, one of the gas companies put out a super high test gas, like 96 octance rating, that I ran in my dad's '57 Plymouth Belvedere V-8 two door hardtop when I used to drag race light to light against all comers on K Street in Sacramento, CA, that cost $.42 / gal. ) A pair of Levis jeans back then cost around $3.00.

This morning I paid $3.15 per gallon to fill up. I just checked JC Penny for the current price of the Levis jeans I wore back then - 501 Shrink to Fit, at $46 per pair, or $37 if you buy two or more. Do the math - gas is still, relatively, a better buy than Levis jeans. And before the price of gas took off a few years ago, when it was still well below $2.00, the price had inflated at a much lower and slower rate than any other commonly used commodity, whether clothes, food, toys, tools, etc. etc. etc.

Getting back to the MPG thing. I'm curious how others are doing in their current rigs for actual fuel economy compared to the sticker MPG when they bought the vehicle ( if bought new or if a used vehicle had the original window sticker in it ).

To get it started, my last vehicle was a '97 Toyota Tacoma 2.7 liter four cylinder with standard transmission. The sticker estimate was, as I recall, 23 highway and 19 city. Over 175,000 miles, it averaged, overall, about 27 mpg. My current ride is an '05 Tacoma 4 liter six with an automatic. The sticker estimate is 21 highway and 18 city. Over 66,000 miles, it's averaged right around 25-26 mpg. I do a lot of highway driving, usually on cruise control below 60 MPH, so my figures are skewed to the high side.

So how are you folks doing ?? What kind of vehicle do you drive, what kind of mpg does it get, and how does it compare to the sticker estimate ? How do your driving habits impact your fuel economy, and your budget ?

John