road test

Andy Stonehouse
July 16, 2008

With the happy news this week that offshore oil wells will line the pristine coasts of Oregon and Northern California in a few decades, it struck me as a good time to examine fuel efficiency.

As noted in the national media, since gasoline hit $4 a gallon in middle America after Memorial Day, U.S. motorists have finally, symbolically, recognized that there might be a problem with what they’ve been driving and the way they’ve been doing so for the past decade.

Evidently it took that $4 benchmark for people to do so; overnight, SUV sales dropped to zero, the major manufacturers announced freezes on truck production, and General Motors seems poised to completely implode.

What can you, the motoring public, do to both continue to get to work and shopping destinations, but not feel like a complete sucker when it comes to purchasing that all-important oil-derived commodity (still priced, in most cases, less than bottled water)?

Aside from vigorous letter-writing campaigns and threats of boycotts (we’ll see how well those work), my modest proposal is this — drive with a bit more forethought, and everything will be fine. Not every trip to the grocery store is a competition, each moment on I-70 need not be a battle for world supremacy, and the weekend trip to Target in Silverthorne – well, that might have to be a monthly thing.

The caveat to my own rule that you can drive as fast or as far or make as many stop-and-go trips as you want, you just don’t get to complain about fuel prices. Total exemption.

Should you care to play along in a new spirit of personal responsibility, as eerily Libertarian as that sounds, your motoring can yield untold dividends.

The most viable option that many have embraced in the past few years (besides opting to return to public transportation, which isn’t always a livable option in the mountains) is the hybrid automobile, and there are both good and bad points.

I just cracked nearly 70 mpg in a 2008 Toyota Prius, cruising along in steady city freeway traffic (with the air conditioner on, no less); trying to do the same in the same car up Vail Pass is obviously not going to do the same. In the case of Vail Pass, 40-something mpg is, in the best of situations, more normal.

Prius driving, as those of you who’ve experienced it, also is not like driving a normal car. Starts are slow and labored (unless you floor the tiny gas engine, thereby defeating the fuel savings), the car makes all kinds of odd noises while you’re cruising along, the regenerative brakes are exceptionally heavy … and you become one of those Prius-driving people, which isn’t a lot of laughs. You’ll also be on a long wait list to actually get one of the cars, although Toyota will meet some future needs by building them at a U.S. plant – in 2010.

I also was a big supporter for diesel options until the incomprehensible geopolitics of price, demand, supply, air regulations, government subsidies and refinery capacity suddenly made the one-time junk fuel $5 a gallon.

The price-to-mileage differential still sorta makes sense if you have an old Jetta that gets more than 40 mpg (the 2009 VW models will do so, quite handily). If you travel around in the diesel-powered 4x4 Jeep Grand Cherokee, like I did a couple of weekends ago, even light-footed efforts will earn you only 22 mpg. This is, admittedly, an improvement from the 18-19 mpg rating of the Cherokee’s other traditional gas-powered engines, but the math doesn’t quite work out at $5 a gallon – similar story for the VW Touareg diesel. I got more than 25 mpg in a 4,300 pound, 350-horsepower, 4.2-liter V8-powered Audi A8 with 12,000 miles on it, and the premium fuel in that tank seemed like a bargain by comparison.

Here, then, is my best-case scenario. I spent Memorial Day in a $32,000 2009 Acura TSX, and by driving in a fashion that was just a little more sedate than normal, I got 36 mpg.

The TSX, as you can see, is not one of those miserly little new-school econoboxes like a Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, the Toyota Yaris, or the cute but laughable (and strangely fuel inefficient) Smart car.

Rather, the TSX is a four-door of considerable size, something akin to a BMW 3-series, with roomy seating in front and back and a full trunk that’s not eaten up by batteries or, in the case of some of the micro-cars, nonexistent.

It has all of the bells and whistles – navigation system, wheel-mounted paddles for the five-speed automatic, sporty leather seating — but the real secret is a 2.4-liter four-cylinder VTEC engine that, despite its comparatively austere 201 horsepower, sips gasoline like $40-a-snifter cognac.

And, it will still absolutely haul ass if pressed into duty.

Drive it like your grandmother, though, with paced, safe launches onto the freeway, steady and smooth acceleration, and long-range trip planning that emphasizes less time spent at 80 mph on the interstate, and more scenic 65 mph cruising … and voila, 36 mpg. I got more than 500 miles out of a tank of gas (premium, unfortunately), getting into diesel territory.

I realize not everyone has the patience to take slower, shorter trips or to more calmly merge into 85 mph traffic on I-70 at Eagle, but it’s something to think about. Far better than that line of oil platforms along the horizon of the Oregon coast.