Gas Prices . . .
All you guys with under $3.00 gas are so lucky! Here regular is around $3.25 or so. Since my daily driver is diesel I was thrilled to find it for $2.97 this morning . . . the first under three buck fuel I've seen in quite awhile. It almost made going to the dentist worthwhile (I don't usually drive in that neighborhood).
While those old land yachts get pretty hopeless mileage in urben driving, some aren't so awful on the highway. In the city weight is the enemy, and there is no way to repeatedly accelerate 4000-5000 pounds from a standstill without using a lot of fuel.
Once over about 60 mph, though, aerodynamic drag gradually becomes more important than weight. While the land yachts generally don't have low drag designs, their frontal areas are often less than on modern SUVs, and the overall drag is a function of both aerodynamic efficiency and frontal area. SUVs are pretty hopeless in that they are tall and have a lot of ground clearance. The height increases the frontal area, while the excessive ground clearance allows a lot of airflow under the vehicle. That's bad because underbody areas are rarely smooth and thus a lot of high-drag turbulance is created between the underbody and road.
The upshot is that if you must drive something big and inefficient, a nice old luxury car may be capable of better highway mileage than big modern SUVs, particularly if the car is recent enough to benefit from fuel injection. The benefit for the rest of us on the road is that it is so much nicer to look at an old Lincoln or Caddy than yet another Suburban/Range Rover/X5/Escalade/Navigator!
All you guys with under $3.00 gas are so lucky! Here regular is around $3.25 or so. Since my daily driver is diesel I was thrilled to find it for $2.97 this morning . . . the first under three buck fuel I've seen in quite awhile. It almost made going to the dentist worthwhile (I don't usually drive in that neighborhood).
While those old land yachts get pretty hopeless mileage in urben driving, some aren't so awful on the highway. In the city weight is the enemy, and there is no way to repeatedly accelerate 4000-5000 pounds from a standstill without using a lot of fuel.
Once over about 60 mph, though, aerodynamic drag gradually becomes more important than weight. While the land yachts generally don't have low drag designs, their frontal areas are often less than on modern SUVs, and the overall drag is a function of both aerodynamic efficiency and frontal area. SUVs are pretty hopeless in that they are tall and have a lot of ground clearance. The height increases the frontal area, while the excessive ground clearance allows a lot of airflow under the vehicle. That's bad because underbody areas are rarely smooth and thus a lot of high-drag turbulance is created between the underbody and road.
The upshot is that if you must drive something big and inefficient, a nice old luxury car may be capable of better highway mileage than big modern SUVs, particularly if the car is recent enough to benefit from fuel injection. The benefit for the rest of us on the road is that it is so much nicer to look at an old Lincoln or Caddy than yet another Suburban/Range Rover/X5/Escalade/Navigator!
