Shane James: “It now costs about $4,000 so with the $2,000 rebate this is still $2,000 and even at $2 per litre this takes a long time to recoup.“
Actually, it wouldn’t take too long at all. At the moment gas is around 64c/litre, compared to $1.60 for petrol. So a tank-full will cost you $40 instead of $100. Sure, you’ll use more, so your 450km range will be reduced to 300km. Overall, that means that $60 worth of gas will get you as far as $100 worth of petrol. That means that 50 fill-ups is all it will take to recoup your $2000 investment. If you fill up every week, you’ll recoup in a year, which is a way better return than buying a diesel or hybrid car.
Memphis: “Go to a middle eastern country and the price of petrol is cheap as chips.“
Its the same for us. When oil was $50 a barrel, petrol was already over $1 a litre here. A barrel of oil is now 160% more than that so, if we were paying the world price, petrol should be more than $2.60 a litre. We import about one-third of our oil so we only endure about one-third of that pain. In the Middle East, they export oil so the domestic price is completely unaffected by world prices and probably reflects the actual cost of producing it.
mongoose: “In fact many 4 cyl cars would outperform alot of heavy underpowered 6cyl cars.“
Hardly. A base-model Falcon is faster than a Golf GTI, a whole lot more practical and about 5 grand cheaper. If you want similar performance to the Big Aussie 6, you are going to have to buy a more expensive 4-cylinder hatchback which will take you several years to recoup in petrol savings. Or buy an LPG Falcon, get better performance than any similarly priced 4 cylinder hatchback and save heaps from the get-go.
vp: “current hybrids are in most instances a joke and the claimed comsumption is not achieved.“
That’s pretty much the case with all of those figures but they still serve as a useful comparison between vehicles. My car is supposed to get 8.9 but the reality is that its just dropped back to 9.7, after spending a couple of months at 9.8 after my day at Oran Park. Its about what I expected.
Steve: “Who in their mind would buy a big car at this point in time? I had a commodore and downsized to a yaris…sure beats filling the tank for $115 and having it last a week or so.“
I suppose it depends on the reason you buy a car. If you gave me a Yaris it would sit my garage and rot. If you wanted to swap my Astra for your VE SS Commodore, I’d be interested because I buy a car to enjoy driving it.
For myself, I really don’t care. I’m starting to think I might have to put $25 a week into my car instead of $20 but that is hardly going to be a problem. My car will run on 95 but I choose to put 98 octane fuel in it and am happy to pay an even bigger premium to use Mobil fuel, which is the most expensive. At double the current price, $50 a week in petrol wouldn’t be a hardship either. Of course, as it gets more and more stingy bastards off the roads, I’ll be more and more likely to want to drive so I might end up having to spend more on petrol, but that won’t worry me either as driving is far and away my favourite past-time. I’d stop going to the movies and eating out before I ever considered not driving to save money. If you think about it, at 10l/100km at an average speed of 50km/h around town, you spend about $8 an hour on petrol, which compares quite favourably to $10 an hour for a couple of schooners or $15 for a two-hour movie. It doesn’t even stop me from thinking that an SV6 Ute might be my next car. [Interestingly, Commodore utes have way better resale than sedans.]
People have had a long time, five or six years at least, to get used to the fact that things are going to change - if they are too slow to adapt, screw ‘em!
One of our editors here loses all sense of perspective when it comes to the Mini. When one shows up at the office, he squeals with delight and runs around his cubicle, waving his hands and saying âoh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!â over and over again â it’s really kind of cute. Unfortunately, he doesn’t own a bike, or he could’ve saved me the folly of seeing if the new Clubman â a stretched version of the Cooper coupe â was a Weekend Athlete car. 
