Cars and their cost

Just a little rant about cars in general and the cost to run them.

Cars are like boats, their a hole in the road that you pour money into… here’s how to make the hole smaller.

My 1992 GEO Metro just rolled over the 200,000 mile mark and still gets an average of 47 MPG all of the time. This got me thinking, over the last 4 years that we’ve been using the Metro (instead of using our  Plymouth Voyager van which gets 23 MPG) we have driven the Metro about 50,000 miles and averaged 47 mpg during that time (high of 55 mpg and low of 45 mpg), (Oh, I’m not guessing,  I’ve kept records to prove it).

 

Lets do the math…
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GEO Metro

50,000miles / 47mpg = 1064 gals of gas

1064 gals of gas times oh, say $3.50/gal = $3724.00 spent to run the little car over 50,000 miles.

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Plymouth Voyager

50,000miles / 23mpg = 2174 gals of gas

2174 gals of gas times $3.50/gal = $7609.00 needed to run this car over the same distance!

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This is a difference of $3885.00 !!!   that we saved by using the Metro

WOW!

The GEO Metro may be a little cheap rattle box but the savings in gas alone has paid for…

Original cost of the Metro

Repairs to the car to put it on the road

The entire purchase of “pinky” our KIA Spectra-5

The cost to insure both vehicles all these years

The maintenance cost for both vehicles

 

My question to all of you is…

 

When the GEO Metro was built it was designed to get high fuel efficiency because gas was …ready for this… $1.65/gal.!!!!!!

Gas is close to $2.00 more expensive now than when the car was built (22 years ago!),

Why can’t they build a cheap car that does the same today?

 

PS.

Here’s the cost savings over the life of this little car…

$30,400 to drive the Voyager 200,000 miles

$14,000 to drive the Metro 200,000 miles

$16,400 savings over the life of the car

Now, if only they still made this little car think of what you could do with an extra $16,000.00 in your pocket!

PPS.

Never leave an old dog in the yard alone!