Ga$ Price How high will they go?

[MICAH1]

Originally Posted by RallyBob Ironically the answer is pretty simple. Reduce vehicle weights. But we dug our own graves here, as Americans we want it all...performance, cheap prices, luxury....all the accoutrements. Well with that comes weight, so we need more power, more sound deadening, more electronics, etc. Oh, and if you want to live when that 5500 lb SUV runs into your VW Golf, we'd better make the Golf weigh 3000 lbs then.... Even 'small' cars weigh a lot here...Honda Civics weigh over 2900 lbs now! If we all drove lighter weight vehicles then the threat from other vehicles hitting us would be lowered, so we wouldn't have to build everything like a tank. If we drove lighter vehicles they'd be faster...a LOT faster in every regard. With lighter weight comes the need for smaller engines, smaller brakes, smaller everything. Less resources consumed all around. Europe has know this for years, cars with 40-50 mpg are not that uncommon. :

You are right Bob......... unfortunately the auto industry dangled the carrot, and we being the rabbits take the bait each time. Got to have those whistles and bells!!!!

[traytodd]

Has anyone dropped one of these L24s into a GT or Manta?

[RallyBob]

A few years back someone talked about doing this swap. The biggest hurdle would be the front drive-to-rear drive conversion. Don't know if it was ever accomplished.

BTW, a little research shows that with a 5-speed manual trans, the L24 engine, and in a 2850 lb Saturn, the mileage was typically 36-42 on the highway. So I imagine in a GT you'd see 45+ mpg.

[West Coast GT]

I've had two Saturns with the L24 engine.
Nice little engine; for my daughters while they were in high school, now college. To me, they feel like a cheap 4-banger. But to be honest, they start every time, have run reliably with very few problems (all minor), and are fuel/maintenance efficient. They're like the energizer bunny - they just keep right on going, and going.

The only major problem with the engine was when one of them was stolen. Apparently it fired right up as always.

I don't think I'd care to have one in my GT. There are too many other low-cost easy alternatives to increasing mileage. Taller, narrower tires, increase breathing for the old CIH engine, electric fan, advanced timing, better carburation, and A FIFTH GEAR!

Without any of these alterations (except for the carb) I have gotten 31.2 miles to the gallon since June 18th of last year. That includes city, freeway, and idling in the garage while I fiddle with the carb / timing.

[traytodd]

A scam that I heard about recently is that people are stealing license plates, installing them on their car, tanking up and taking off without paying.

[West Coast GT]

"oil terrorism"

Come on guys! It's bad enough we have everyone else throwing about terms that overstate and exaggerate daily situations. It's not honest.

Save the terms for what they really are. Terrorism is deliberately blowing up two highrise offices and civilians for the purpose of injecting fear into general society. Terrorism is not inflating oil price. Terrorism is not a threatening message from your neighbor about your dog crapping on their lawn. Terrorism is not road rage.

So quit with the "oil terrorism" exaggeration and other over-stated over-used adjectives. Be honest.

Guys, my intent is not to single any of you out for criticism. I’ve heard others use this term lately and am frustrated. This is a great group of folks (who also happen to drive very cool cars).

[West Coast GT]

Originally Posted by traytodd A scam that I heard about recently is that people are stealing license plates, installing them on their car, tanking up and taking off without paying.

Hey, I was home all day, by myself, working on the car. Besides, they didn't actually see me do it.

[RallyBob]

Originally Posted by traytodd A scam that I heard about recently is that people are stealing license plates, installing them on their car, tanking up and taking off without paying.

They solved that problem here. Either you swipe a card at the pump, or pay inside w/cash. Otherwise, pumps don't come on!

[West Coast GT]

This scam is a good argument for personalized license plates. When a police report states that a white big-ass SUV was used in the theft of gasoline, and the plates read "72 Opel GT", an investigator might spot something that just doesn't feel right.

[jeff denton]

Wattiefan's story about getting caught stealing gas is funny. But I can top that. The same thing happened to me about a year ago. Trouble is, the local convenience stores won't keep receipt paper in their pumps, so to get one you have to go inside, stand in line, and deal with the zit kid at the counter who is so put out that he'd have to print a receipt for you. So I just write down the date and number of gallons and dollar amount in my delivery notebook and hit the road. I have to turn in the information just like a receipt so that the book keeper can enter it into the checking account of course, as I use a debit card for all gas.
Well they have cameras at the pump, and my pickup is clearly marked with the company name... My wife calls on the cell phone and asks if I just bought gas. Yes. Well the sheriffs dept. is on the phone saying you didn't pay for the gas. I told her to give the officer my phone number. Which, wouldn't you know, rang twenty seconds later. I explained that I used my credit card... no I didn't get a receipt because...well he wants me to turn around, big loaded trailer and all, and go back to the store. No, I said, I'm really busy doing my job and don't have time for this, if there was a gas theft and I am a suspect your job is to collect enough evidence to convince the county attorney that he can prove me guilty and arrange a nice quiet vacation in beautiful downtown Deer Lodge (state prison) for me... You know who I am and how to find me. He said, yeah, OK, I'll go talk to the store manager and will be back in touch if necessary... I said yeah, surely the store manager can easily verify that a debit card in the name of Party Time was just used at his gas pump?
End of that story. He didn't call me back nor have his buddies hunt me down.
Can't happen again because now all pumps take credit card or prepay only, like Bob's. The way it's gotta be or theft would be out of control, I'm afraid. The cost of living has some people really desperate, and I fear it will be getting worse. Lately we have a rash of "insufficient funds" checks coming in, about a dozen in the last month, we may have had half a dozen in the last two years before that. What is going on?

[hrcollinsjr]

The latest way I've heard to steal gas is to slide under pickup's and SUV's with the large plastic gas tanks and drill a hole in them with a cordless drill.


Harold

[MICAH1]

Originally Posted by hrcollinsjr The latest way I've heard to steal gas is to slide under pickup's and SUV's with the large plastic gas tanks and drill a hole in them with a cordless drill. Harold

Yeah, but don't create a spark.........

[traytodd]

Just paid $4.45 for regular in Cameron Park, CA (Sac area).

[Hiro]

more EEC news:
trucker demo is extending to Spain & Portugal,
here in France fishermen started work again after 3 weeks of strike/harbor blockade because they are financially exhausted,
farmers have sporadic actions such as main road blockade or "snail cruising" (this is trucker's favorite also),
political & financial pressure is increasing on the french main oil company (Total) to release some of their benefits to help pass this crisis.
gas theft at night on the parked car has started here & there as well as bigger coordinated actions targeting transportation companies (big truck with big tanks...).
generally speaking any kind of theft of public wealth is becoming casual,
gangs are operating at night on the highways to steal the electric cables (copper traffic).
consensus is the following among the car collector population: hide everything you can & sell/dump all the rest!
no riot yet but... stay tuned!
Hiro

[jlthunder]

Again, something is going on here. Oil dropped over $10.00/bbl last week and nothing happened at the pumps. I figure there is a delay, but as soon as it jumped back up, pump prices were up in a matter of minutes.

[namba209]

You haven't seen that in years past? When OPEC announces a price increase in crude, the prices at the pump go up immediately. When the price drops they wait until the oil gets through the refining process to drop the prices at the pumps. That's been going on for way too many years, but at least they did drop the price at the pumps back then.

[Gumby]

Originally Posted by kwilford I agree with the first statement about oil terrorism. The second statement is untrue, at least for American supply versus demand.

NAFTA... a whole different can-o-worms I'm not going to open here.

Anyway...

I agree that we can not meet our own needs but this isn't because we don't have Petroleum or the ability to collect it.

Originally Posted by RallyBob If we all drove lighter weight vehicles then the threat from other vehicles hitting us would be lowered, so we wouldn't have to build everything like a tank. If we drove lighter vehicles they'd be faster...a LOT faster in every regard. With lighter weight comes the need for smaller engines, smaller brakes, smaller everything. Less resources consumed all around. Europe has know this for years, cars with 40-50 mpg are not that uncommon.

I have a buddy with a little old VW diesel truck (5 speed) that gets 40mpg. The old CRX from Honda with the 8v engines were reported to get 50-60+mpg. I've heard reports as high as 70mpg but I don't believe everything I hear.

[jeff denton]

Something occurred to me today. I don't remember just when the price of gas went into three decimals. Always a "9", too. What other commodity do we buy that's priced like that? Sometimes it's advertised at (like) $3.799/gallon, others write it $3.79-9/10 per gallon, a number no math teacher would accept.
Whose idea was this, and why shouldn't I add another decimal to the price of my retail products?
Just wondering. Crazy.
Oh, here's a gas theft story for you. On the TV news they reported, and showed the surveillance video, of a big cargo trailer (just like mine, but no Party Time logo, sorry) that parked right on top of the underground gas tank fill cap. Apparently then someone inside the trailer, through a cutout in the floor, removed the caps and pumped a thousand gallons of gas out. And drove away. Pretty clever, huh?

[jordan]

I drive round trip to work around 36 miles a day 5 times a week and I do notice the increase in fuel cost. I remember when I thought it was steep at $43 for a tank of fuel in my saab, then it went to $53, and now it is over $63 a tank. The rising fuel prices don't hit me as hard as others because I know people at work are driving full sized pick up trucks over an hour each way and all they can say is "someone has to do something about these gas prices" this turns my stomach! How hard one is hit by the rising fuel prices is up to them, it costs money to drive anything and it is soley up to the individual to decide how much they "want" to pay as there is no "have to" about it (this notion is upsetting to many when I break it down to that level) But transportation expense is up to the individual as the person in the hemi dodge ram with the tonneau cover over the bed and nothing more inside except one driver and a cup of coffee has made their decision on how much they would like to pay for transportation; they chose how much they wanted to pay for fuel when they decided what they were going to put their fuel in, I have no sympathy for this type of person. Vehicles of that size used for personal transportation are a luxury and it is proving to be a luxury that some can no longer afford. For the contractor that uses their truck for work, micro economics has already fixed their situation...pass the cost on to the customer, the farmer who needs their truck can also pass that cost onto their customer. The individual who "wants" their truck for fun can only eat the cost and that expense ends with them. I see the advantage for the rising gas prices and that is putting more and smaller economical vehicles on the road. The only problem with that is the main economical cars on the road are made with outsourced labor or foreign all together. This was the consumer's mistake when they wanted large gluttonous vehicles from detroit so that is what detroit made. And right now we are demanding something totally different and it will take years for the major US based car manufacturers to respond and to add insult to injury we are behind the fuel economy game because asian car companys have been turning those out for years successfully. Times are changing...

[West Coast GT]

I understand what you're saying. We do determine our transportation costs.
We also determine what vehicles Detroit manufactures. After all, if we don't buy them, they won't build them (Hey that could be a movie title).

To correct a little of what you've said; Toyota, Honda, and Nissan all manufacture automobiles (including small cars) within our country and
Canada.

And Detroit's Big Three are churning out fuel efficient cars right now. And they're shutting down plants that manufacture larger vehicles. They are certainly responding to the changing conditions faster than I've ever seen them respond.
______________
Several weeks ago I was bellyaching about large trucks and SUVs, but I've been seeing quite a few smaller crossovers and hybrids in the papers and on TV lately.

But we're still on the gotta-have-more-performance gig just like we were in the late 1960s. Why are we buying an SUV that gets 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds? What's the purpose of that? I mean really, what is our motivation to purchase that vehicle? Personally, I think it's the big-dick syndrome. Because nothing else washes. There isn't a scenario that supports logic to buy one. So its got to be an emotional decision.

Why does Dodge advertise the Hemi? Hey, it was a decent enough engine in the 1960's but so what? My little brother boasted to me he's got a Hemi. He didn't even know why its called a Hemi, or what the significance is. He just thought it would run circles and impress me. I'm impressed he can afford gas. He must be doing alright for himself. My older brother is looking to buy a Ford Mustang GT to supplement his '69 El Camino.

So why are we buying into the concept we have to have cars most of us don't have the talent and training to drive? Perception.

I have to admit, Bullitt just wouldn't have been the same if Steve McQueen drove a Yugo. Although, there was a turbo Le Car in a Bond movie, and the Italian Job had some kick-ass little Mini Coopers. And these were rather cool. And come on, Suzanne Somers in an original 2-seater T-Bird? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

Who can remember what car Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren drove away at the end of the movie (The Birds)? That was cool.

Perception; we've got to adjust it. Sorry for the rambling, it's the gas fumes from the GT's rear compartment talking.

[hrcollinsjr]

Originally Posted by jordan For the contractor that uses their truck for work, micro economics has already fixed their situation...pass the cost on to the customer, the farmer who needs their truck can also pass that cost onto their customer.

Jordan, I agree with alot of what you said but take exception to part of it. Farmers really are able to mark up what they produce to cover increased expenses? Farm diesel is expensive! Fertilizers and chemicals used to produce crops have gone out the top. I can't afford to fertilize my hay fields for fear of not being able to recoup my $ much less make a profit.

I thought we put our stuff on the open market and took what we were offered or stored it and waited hoping the price would increase. Some have to make payments and don't have the luxury of waiting or maybe the capacity to store all of their yield.

Harold

[PROPEL]

Originally Posted by West Coast GT We also determine what vehicles Detroit manufactures. After all, if we don't buy them, they won't build them... So why are we buying into the concept we have to have cars most of us don't have the talent and training to drive? Perception.

The market cannot be totally blamed for the Detroit SUV craze. Don't forget the power of advertising which makes you think you need that truck for commuting! There's the real perception trick.

We should all thank Edward Bernays. For more info, watch this...The Century of The Self

Still don't believe that you are influenced by subliminal marketing? Check out these short videos, too...

Derren Brown - Subliminal Advertising

Derren Brown NLP

[jeff denton]

Farmers cannot pass on any expense to the consumer. They get to the point where there banker tells them there is no way in hell they are gonna make it another year and they have an equipment auction to reduce the debt he incurred trying to be a productive, efficient, modern farmer. With any luck they can keep the farm and lease it to a corporation that can make a profit, thus he still has a house to live in. Maybe even a job driving the lessee's tractor for a wage instead of a worry.
In the area where I live, the best thing a farmer can do is sell his land to a developer, who then converts it into a shopping mall or a neighborhood.
It's sad. I am only so grateful to my Grandpa who told me to get the hell out of here (referring to the farm). My friends I grew up with who tried to farm for another generation are starving. Losing it.

[jordan]

I do understand the farmer's situation as my father has 40+ head of cattle being raised as organic beef, the cost of diesel, seed, hay, and minerals are through the roof, but for the time being with the quality which is supposedly summed by the word "organic" people will pay the price and if beef needs to go up $.20 a pound to cover diesel and other expenses the consumer in this market will pay. On a larger scale it can be harder to offset especially when there is nothing to set the product apart.

[hrcollinsjr]

Originally Posted by jordan I do understand the farmer's situation as my father has 40+ head of cattle being raised as organic beef, the cost of diesel, seed, hay, and minerals are through the roof, but for the time being with the quality which is supposedly summed by the word "organic" people will pay the price and if beef needs to go up $.20 a pound to cover diesel and other expenses the consumer in this market will pay. On a larger scale it can be harder to offset especially when there is nothing to set the product apart.

Ahh, a niche market for people who are willing to pay because they think they are doing the healthy thing. It's a shame we can't just grow things like we used to using a few chemicals or medicines if need be but have to go to the extreme one way or the other. IIRC organic beef can't even be fed hay or grain produced using modern methods, ie. commercial fertilizers, herbicides to control weeds or GI grains. Then we go the other extreme pumping them full of growth hormones and antibiotics whether they need them or not.

I'm done, it's more fun talking about Opels.

Harold