The 50+ mpg car

Yeah, I used to have one, fifteen years ago.

I've owned three cars in my life. My second one was a 1988 Honda CRX HF. It was a tiny little two-seater. It looked like this:

Actually, this photo makes it look kind of big next to that house. But it isn't.

It was a stick shift powered by a 1.5 liter engine. On the horsepower scale, this ranks somewhere just ahead of a sewing machine. It could barely pull my ass around when I was a tubby 165 pound college boy. But, I shit you not, on a road trip I kept track of the highway mileage and I did better than 50 miles to the gallon. And, that was through the hilly terrain of upstate NY! It only had an 8 gallon tank. One time I remember back when gas was less than a buck a gallon and I filled the thing up for less than 8 bucks!

So, why don't they make cars like this today?

I think it's because this car doesn't fit the way people drive. You had to baby this thing. With this machine, accelerating to 70 mph took some planning and required a lot of give and take that people do not like to exercise on the highway. They generally want to jockey back and forth in and out of lanes, and accelerate towards the next stop light even though it's red.

Ya know, in case there's a caution flag.

Gas will soon go to $4. Ya know why? Cus, we're talking about it.

So, if you need a gas sipper to get you by until this whole crisis is over, you can buy one of those hybrids, or just find a late-80's/early 90's Honda CRX. Make sure you get the HF and not the SI. The SI is a real gas hog at 35 mpg.

Bye.