I just bought a Jetta TDI. I use it for my commute from home to Air National Guard duty, and love it... it lessens my fuel bill by half over driving my Mustang! The Stang will be reserved for around-town funt jaunts once or twice a month, as will the TR6 I am getting before long. The VW gets used a couple of times a year. I live about a mile from work, so I walk every work day of the year (beats paying $50 for a parking permit AND rusting out my exhaust with such a short drive). Fuel prices have not caused me to change my driving habits much... I really only drive when absolutely necessary anyway.

That said, I HAVE seen more Prius' and noted that TDIs are harder and harder to find. Most that I had called about while car-shopping had already been sold.

That begs a question: every VW dealer I have been to claims they can't keep TDIs on the lot (and sure enough, I have yet to see one on a VW lot). They say people will order them w/o even test-driving them first, and buy sight unseen. Why, then, isn't VW importing more of these? Is there a DOT or EPA mandate that says that only X% of an automakers sales can be diesel? I don't get it. You'd think if they sell so well they'd boost production of them.


Chris

My Austrian-born Mercedes mechanic bought one for his wife - he claims she is getting 52 MPG!!! Is that possible?

-g

when i bought my first 300sd in 2000 diesel was about $1/gal and about 1 cent cheaper than regular unleaded. i was pissed when diesel started getting more expensive than premium (especially considering it much less costly to refine than gasoline). i bought a 300se to see if i caould switch back to buying gas but i found that the diesel gets 20% better fuel economy and even with diesel being higher than regular gas (about $2.55/gal) it is still cheaper to drive the diesel. that being said the prices are killing me but i have not curtailed my driving because of it.

It wouldn't surprise me. I got 46 in mixed driving (including a few spirited starts and 250+ miles at 76mph on the highway with the AC on) on my first tank. If I baby it I don't think 50 would be impossible, esp. since mine has manual windows, mirrors, seats, etc... (i.e. as light as possible).

Yeah, why is that? Do they just see a demand issue with the trucking companies for diesel? A sure thing if they jack the cost of diesel up? That jerks my chain, too... :mad:

Remember when VW came up with the bug? People were buying them new and marking them up and selling them to others. Now, the demand has calmed down some. Maybe VW is set up to manufacture so many and they might not want to make more because they don't want to have so many in stock. Remember, inventory costs money to keep. Also, what if they made more and demand went down? then be stuck with a bunch of cars you have to move by lowering the price. You might All things to consider when you are in production.

Good point... but the VW dealers have loads of cars on the lot, just no TDIs!

since I must commute for work, I've decided to conserve by not working.

Wanna bet? If gas goes suddenly instead of gradually to $5 a gal, do you think there will be no economic repercussions? You think that gas price effects only your wallet at the pump? Think again. Gas goes up and so does the price of everything else. That is unless you live off the land.

Our electric bills down here have gone up 26% in the last 6 mos.

The electric company claims it's all due to rising fuel prices.

Can you see the fed lowering interest rates to spur economic growth within 6 mos? I do. They've lowered mortgage rates again. Coincidence? Na.

Here's proof:

Oil prices up, mortgage rates down
By Holden Lewis • Bankrate.com
Rising oil prices contributed to a second consecutive weekly drop in mortgage rates.

The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell 5 basis points to 5.70 percent, according to the Bankrate.com national survey of large lenders. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point. The mortgages in this week's survey had an average total of 0.32 discount and origination points. One year ago, the mortgage index was 6.04 percent.

The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell 7 basis points to 5.08 percent. The one-year adjustable-rate mortgage was unchanged at 4.06 percent.

- advertisement -


Long-term mortgage rates tend to move in the same direction as yields on 10-year Treasury notes, and those yields fell when oil flirted with $55 a barrel late last week.

"The bond market furthered its recent trend of moving in lock step with oil prices: Higher oil prices, lower yields; lower oil prices, higher yields," financial analyst Harvey B. Hirschhorn wrote this week for clients of Banc of America Capital Management.

Bond traders believe that higher energy costs threaten economic growth, Hirschhorn says.

Higher energy prices could add fuel to inflation, too -- and rising prices would put upward pressure on interest rates. But right now, bond investors are more worried about the effects of rising oil prices on economic growth than on inflation.

Bankrate's benchmark 30-year rate was an already-low 5.84 percent in its Oct. 6 survey, then dropped to 5.75 percent in the Oct. 13 survey. The two-week slide incited a surge of mortgage applications, which were up 7.9 percent, seasonally adjusted, from the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Much of that increase was the result of homeowners wanting to refinance their mortgages, as rates have fallen to a seven-month low.

Those people -- especially the homeowners who engineered cash-out refinancings, in which they borrowed more than they currently owed and pocketed the difference -- will be glad to discover that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has given them his imprimatur.

Speaking at the annual meeting of America's Community Bankers, Greenspan said that "the surge in cash-out mortgage refinancings likely improved rather than worsened the financial condition of the average homeowner." That's especially true of people who used the money to pay off higher-interest debt.

Greenspan believes it's "quite unlikely" that there's a housing bubble that's about to pop, but that the possibility "cannot be readily dismissed." He says that if home prices did drop steeply in large swaths of the country, it could "expose recently incurred mortgage debt to decreasing values of home collateral," but on the other hand, people who have owned their homes for more than a year "have equity buffers in their homes adequate to withstand any price decline other than a very deep one."

One can hope that he will clarify his thoughts in coming weeks and months.


We're all doomed............... ;)

Thats one of my pet peeves, here in Michigan we have literally an infinite supply of Natural Gas, most of the NG wells in Michigan had huge tax payer subsidies to be drilled.

And what happens?

The power company converts a Nuke plant to NG, at taxpayer expense and to add insult to injury they are banging us huge on electric and gas prices. We have deregulated energy but they forgot one big component of deregulation....competition. Its a bipartison scam and to me is the sickest abuse of power I've seen in my lifetime.

Hell yeah
 

I've been watching the nickels on gas expenditures ever since I started driving, and that's almost 30 years now. Especially now. I rethink trips (a la the WWII question "Is this trip really necessary?" when gas was rationed), I walk where I can, I order stuff via Internet, I keep the car (the economical M111 4-cyl.) tuned and the tires well-filled.

The pundits keep telling us that gas prices, "in real terms," were higher in 1981. Well, let's see. . . .

1) In 1981 I rented a 2-bedroom apt. in a nice suburb for $250/month. That figure is worth $440 today . . . but I have a hell of a time finding a nice 1-bedroom in a decent area for that, and have had to settle on the cheaper bank of the river. Anything in my old area goes for a *lot* more than $440.

2) In 1976, when I started driving, gas was .55 a gallon. My old Ford Maverick, an average-sized car w/ average efficiency, got 15 mpg. Flash to today: The cost of gas has gone up 4.5 times, but we're not getting 67 mpg on average cars, are we?

My point is that so many other prices have gone up, while wages have not, that $3.00/gallon is appreciably harder on the average person's budget than $1.20/gallon was in the early '80s.

“aklim: If the big 3 go down, many people go out of work besides the GM workers. Japan does that too. They tax the hell out of imports to protect the local industry. My cousin works with Toyota in KY. He tells me that where possible, they would buy Jap even in KY. Part of what they are trying to do is protect the big 3 because there will be hell to pay if the big 3 go down.

Lets say for the sake of arguement that you are right. Why hasn't China imported those things here? Hell, they import pretty much everything else. I have seen a Sumuri sword that was made in China. You might be smart but the Chinese are not stupid. There might be reasons that they do not import these cars since it would be a killer of every other car. Perhaps the quality and safety factors are not up to par? Maybe by the time they get it up to par, it would cost about the same as KIAs or Daewoos?

Not much. They just raise the price of gas by taxes is all. Now they are considering a per-mile tax because the cars are so efficient. My issue with that is that they will probably make this new tax supplement the already existing tax and be double or triple dipping.”

So by extension, the slaughter in Iraq is all about subsidizing the interests of big 3?

What is the real risk of loosing them—the big 3 that is? Why do we benefit from them as another fed backed welfare case? How many jobs are directly and indirectly related to car manufacturer? Mind you that service, and long term supply will still take place in the USA because folks won’t ship their car to xxx to have the oil or alternator changed. That is where the vast majority of the jobs are.

By comparison has the country suffered in any way for the progressive loss of manufacturing that has taken place over the last 40 years? We are already largely a service related country. The USA has time and again proven itself hugely resilient.

Did the collapse of Enron and the resultant loss of retirement benefits damage the country? I agree it damaged the folks who invested and worked for Enron, but did it do so for the country?

What is the net loss going to be by bringing in these cheap Chinese made vehicles, where they cost 1/3rd or less of the cost of a typical new car, and get 1/2 the fuel consumption. As I see it it amounts to a savings of about 75% on the purchase price and financing costs, and at least 50% on fuel costs. Is this exorbitant expense really worth it to protect the big 3? Pursue this course and we can stop sending our $$ to the ME. Take cash from them, which clearly the fundamentalists want, and they cease to be a problem.

This might be an irritant to some but I have to agree that the potential of the gov raising taxes to accommodate losses in other revenue sources is likely, but again, isn’t it better if it amounts to a net saving of say 60% on the cost of a vehicle and at least 50% on the cost of fuel?

Hit 2.70 here today. My big E-350 cargo van cost me 87.00 to fill up.

:pukeface: :eek: :dizzy:

To give myself a $$$ break, I told the wife we're staying home today and happy hour will be in my pool. although it's piss warm.