It’s going to hit five bucks a gallon if it hasn’t already. If you are not paying it now, sooner or later you and I are going to be paying five dollars or more a gallon for gasoline. Now every cloud has a silver lining, does this one?
If you have been around for a while then you remember the wonderful 1970’s. Disco was king of the dance floor and Archie Bunker ruled the television ratings. Gas was about thirty some cents a gallon and people were driving around in Buick Electra 225’s that were so large they could be seen from outer space motoring down I-75 or the mega Thunderbird that had grown from the original classic two seater to a behemoth so immense you could hide a Boeing 747 behind it. Both of these ironclads could stretch about ten miles out of a gallon of gasoline on a good day going downhill, a very large hill.
During the 70’s I was a bit of a rebel. I drove and sometimes pushed a small British sports car that was able, on a good day, to squeeze twenty something miles out of a gallon and even more if I was forced to push the car off to the side of the road to make one of the many emergency repairs a British sports car requires. The bottom line was, as gas, if you find it, increased in cost from 30 something cents a gallon to 70 something cents a gallon it had a lot less effect on me than my friends who drove disco cruisers.
Even the big three car manufacturers dumped the land yachts and “downsized” their offerings. The battleship sized cruisers disappeared. Intermediate sized cars were now called full sized, compact cars were labeled intermediate and sub compacts became compacts. Gas prices fluctuated depending on the political winds but for the most part were held somewhat under control.
For some reason when we entered the new century, car buyers wanted bigger, bigger and bigger and the manufacturers were only too happy to produce large high profit vehicles. The end result has been the glut of office building sized SUV’s driven by a sole individual with a cell phone apparently surgically attached to their ear and a sticker attached to the rear bumper that reads “My child was the class idiot of Deep Ditch Elementary School”.
Or, the incredible journey of the lowly pickup truck that has grown from a utilitarian vehicle used by farmers to haul fence posts and barbwire to the current incarnation that looks like some sort of a military assault vehicle and only hauls the ego of the driver.
Believe it or not the overall average mileage rate for new cars has dropped compared to what it was twenty years ago. All the advancements made in making the automobile more energy efficient have been negated by the increase in vehicle size and continued addition of creature comforts that have returned the gas mileage of new cars to the days of disco and Archie Bunker.
The rise in gas prices will only end when demand diminishes and supply increases no longer making crude oil a profitable investment for speculators. Like the real estate market, when the profits end, the speculators will take their money and play somewhere else leaving a mess for everyone else to clean up.
Which brings us to the silver lining, the demise of the over sized, gas wasting steel dinosaurs. With new car lots filled with unsold Escalades and Hummers the manufacturers are getting the message. Small cars and trucks will again populate our roads causing less pollution and using fewer resources. Yes, that “my kid is” sticker will fit nicely on the back of a car that gets more than twenty miles per gallon and the sea turtles and whales will thank you.
Now, if only the British could build a sports car that was easier to push.