Gas fuels car buying decisions

[FORUMAKERS]

I could care less about gas prices, the "WE GOTTA SAVE THU EN-VI-RRR-MENT AND TREES FOR UR KIDS FU-TRRRR" liberals can kiss my you know what, because your Prius', Civic Hybrids and Camry hybrids' car battery come disposal time does more HARM to the environment than GOOD. Get over it, tree huggers, you are all homos, I will continute to drive a V8, plain and simple.

[Common Sense]

Spankey wrote:

Everyone gripes about fuel costs but no body seems to want to do anything about it. No one wants to car pool or ride a bus, theres traffic ALL THE TIME! Everyone wants to gripe but no one stays home. The roads are full of large SUV and trucks with one person riding in them. Heck, why reduce the price of fuel? Its selling like crazy! The fuel companies are like Starbucks, why discount something that is selling like crazy?

Husband lives an hour away from work, car pool or bus not an option. He must go to work, can not afford to get a different vehicle because of high prices on everything, can not afford to move because houses not selling. Sometimes there are no simple solutions. Government could step in, hello we are occupying Iraq, gas central. Take some oil for protection payment. Also, oil stabilized for a few days, yet gas prices rose each day. What is up with that?

[Common Sense]

Jake wrote:

People still drive large vehicles because they offer better crash protection than small vehicles, on average. I would rather walk away from a crash with a slimmer wallet than die in one with a fat wallet.
Peace of mind is worth the extra cost.

AMEN! Had an expedition drive on the hood of my Dodge Grand Caravan (not a small car) and stop inches from my front windshield in a wreck. If I had been in a small car, I would have been killed. I now drive a expedition, and feel safer, broke when I feel it up, but safer.

[Gas Saver]

Well, I guess the good thing is that gas is starting to get really expensive and people are starting to take their smaller car to the store, rather than the behemoth. That means fewer behemoths on the road to crush whatever they hit and less fuel burned.

Go ahead and own one. You large-vehicle owning people are the ones with the kids, so while you flush cubic yards of cash away on fuel, I'm buying oil company stock with the money I save on fuel, not buying things for the kids I don't have, etc! Go XOM; go BP!

[Damian]

and theres nothin like a V8 when you want to pass someone. I prefer to do it quickly (couple hundred feet) than to take a mile to pass

[Damian]

and who gets to clean the acid from the batteries when that little hybrid gets creamed.....call the hazmat team and encon.....who do you fine......the owner or the manufacturer...take that you freakin tree huggers

[Gas Saver]

Damian wrote:

and theres nothin like a V8 when you want to pass someone. I prefer to do it quickly (couple hundred feet) than to take a mile to pass

There's alot more to this than just back-of-the envelope, but here's a simple comparo of power-to-weight for a typical behemoth versus an econobox:

- 2006 Mini Cooper S: 14.4 lbs/hp
- 2007 Ford Expedition: 17.8 lbs/hp

Having owned a Mini and having driven a behemoth, I can say the Mini is the far superior car. It handles well, is glued to the road at 90+, stops on a dime and will take corners so hard your eyeballs will bounce off the side glass. It'll also walk away from an accelerating behemoth like a like a hooker trying to shake the vice squad.

The behemoth, OTOH, could probably tow a house - but who really needs to tow a house?

[Jake]

Gas Saver wrote:

<quoted text>
There's alot more to this than just back-of-the envelope, but here's a simple comparo of power-to-weight for a typical behemoth versus an econobox:
- 2006 Mini Cooper S: 14.4 lbs/hp
- 2007 Ford Expedition: 17.8 lbs/hp
Having owned a Mini and having driven a behemoth, I can say the Mini is the far superior car. It handles well, is glued to the road at 90+, stops on a dime and will take corners so hard your eyeballs will bounce off the side glass. It'll also walk away from an accelerating behemoth like a like a hooker trying to shake the vice squad.
The behemoth, OTOH, could probably tow a house - but who really needs to tow a house?

Minis are very nice cars but its driver would very likley die if it collided with any large car or SUV. It comes down to basic physics.

What happens when a large UT defensive lineman collides with a quarterback? The smaller quarterback absorbs most of the blow.

[MLB]

Gas Saver wrote:

Yikes. Best of luck to you guys' offspring. They're the ones who are really going to pay.

They don't have the mentality to see further than their "Big ole V-8". Screw their children and their grandchildren. It's all about me, me, me and my "big ole V-8" Pathetic!!!!!!

[Montrose 1973]

I'm still lookin' for a '64 GTO.....Or a '66 Chevelle.

[whee]

MLB wrote:

<quoted text> They don't have the mentality to see further than their "Big ole V-8". Screw their children and their grandchildren. It's all about me, me, me and my "big ole V-8" Pathetic!!!!!!

lol. What I don't get is how giving a crap about the environment and wanting to get back to driving safer, more practical cars is somehow automatically "liberal." Politics has nothing to do with it. The American idea that bigger always = better is pretty troubling.

Minis btw are very safe cars, along with the Smart car which have to meet very strict crash requirements and essentially have frame similar to that of a race car. I hope to buy a mini once I finish school.

[Gas Saver]

I used to frequent the Mini forum back when I had one. People used to post in there all the time about having collisions with much larger vehicles and walking away. The car takes a hit, but it's designed to disperse a great amount of force across a pretty small structure - one heck of an accomplishment, from an engineering perspective.

This notion that a Mini is a deathtrap is backed up by abut the same amount of knowledge and fact as the whole "Hybrids are worse then (misspelling intentional) an H2!" crap. It's nothing more than razor-thin justification for doing nothing and refusing to make even the slightest sacrifice.

As I've said - I don't have kids and am not having any. These fools are selling their own kids' futures down the toilet, but I'll be long gone when it all comes home to roost. May they all have to look their kids in the eye and explain why they didn't do more, despite having known better.

[BEHEMOUTH PRIDE]

Shut up GAS SAVER, you are a little sissy, I have 6 KIDS, and I need to protect my family from a car crash!! TO BE SAFE I WILL CONTINUE TO DRIVE MY GMC SUV, YUKON Xl, and its te BEST!! Fast, SAFE and stylish, SUVs rule, when your little Toyota shitbox or MINI shitbox is crushed then come crying to me. Oh wait, you will not be able to cry you will be DED!!

[Gas Saver]

BEHEMOUTH PRIDE wrote:

Shut up GAS SAVER, you are a little sissy, I have 6 KIDS, and I need to protect my family from a car crash!! TO BE SAFE I WILL CONTINUE TO DRIVE MY GMC SUV, YUKON Xl, and its te BEST!! Fast, SAFE and stylish, SUVs rule, when your little Toyota shitbox or MINI shitbox is crushed then come crying to me. Oh wait, you will not be able to cry you will be DED!!

Wow. I wonder what your kids (6?!? Are you planning to start a farm or something? Talk about contributing to the problem!) will think when they are standing in their own feces, fighting off the 'neighbors' for the last scrap of food or heating oil within 100 miles. I'm thinking their quality of life will be drastically worse than ours, mainly because people like you overbreed and refuse to give even a moment's thought to just how wasteful your lifestyle is.

[Telling It Like It Is]

Hmmm. My family considers ourselves to be pretty green. We switched to CFLs a long time ago, we recycle, we use canvas totes instead of plastic bags when we shop. We shop second hand or at least try to be aware and buy environmentally friendly products. We are switching our appliances to more energy efficient models as they die.

We live on a small farm that is slowly becoming self-sufficient. We are wanting to purchase solar panels so that we can get off-grid. We plant trees and flowers.(Even the saplings that come from the Arbor Day Foundation will grow eventually.) We are very aware of our environment and try to always learn more.

We also own a V-8 Ford Expedition. Granted it usually only goes to the school and back once per day. Six miles round trip. Husband drops off on his way to work and I pick up. That is because we refuse to put our first grader on the bus at six a.m. or wait until almost five p.m. for him to get home.

We cannot haul livestock trailers with a Mini, no matter how cute the Mini might appear. I do hope that within five years an electric car that is AFFORDABLE will be available. I could do all of my around town running on one charge. Now that would be way cool.

So I guess that means I am a liberal, treehugging, hippie, hick chick. Cool.

[Built Ford Tough]

Gas Saver wrote:

<quoted text>
Wow. I wonder what your kids (6?!? Are you planning to start a farm or something? Talk about contributing to the problem!) will think when they are standing in their own feces, fighting off the 'neighbors' for the last scrap of food or heating oil within 100 miles. I'm thinking their quality of life will be drastically worse than ours, mainly because people like you overbreed and refuse to give even a moment's thought to just how wasteful your lifestyle is.

I hate to say it but you have finally said something I agree with. People today having all these damn kids. WTF man. And the sad part is half these women walking around with all these damn kids have no father around. Most are going to grow up and be nothing but dregs to society.

[Gas Saver]

Built Ford Tough wrote:

<quoted text>I hate to say it but you have finally said something I agree with. People today having all these damn kids. WTF man. And the sad part is half these women walking around with all these damn kids have no father around. Most are going to grow up and be nothing but dregs to society.

That's the elephant in room that nobody wants to acknowledge. It's like the default lifestyle is to have kids, without thought to the 6+ billion of us already here and how rapidly we're converting all available biomass into humans. I swear, I believe that some people won't stop until we're literally shoulder-to-shoulder and standing in our own excrement!

Many believe that the planet can comfortably support about 1 billion of us; we're so far over that now, that once nature decides the time has come, there will be a die-off like nothing seen before. I just hope I'm dead by the time we hit the wall, because so many are in denial and won't stop scaling up consumption, population, etc..

We can't invent ourselves out of this. There is only so much fuel/material that can be converted into humans; something has to give. Birth control isn't just for the poor and the non-white.