Things that make you go hmm

The Husband and I have recently rediscovered one of our favorite shows, Top Gear, and have now added it to our TiVo subscriptions. It's a fantastic show - yes it's about cars. But it's more than just a car show. It's got great humor as well. It's quite entertaining. The other night they were showing Season 12 Episode 4 - Racing on Fumes. It got me thinking.

Each of the three guys got to pick a car of their choice to drive from Basel, Switzerland to Blackpool, UK. They said this drive is roughly 750 miles. The catch? This was a race on a single tank of fuel. No fill-ups allowed. They all chose diesels which makes sense as they are more efficient than gasoline engines, but still 750 miles seems like an impossible length for any car. (My Jetta GLI only gets 300 something per tank!) And they were allowed to also choose whatever route they wanted to in order to get there.

Jeremy chose a diesel Jaguar XJ6. He chose a car that he figured would run out of fuel and land him very near his home as it did so. He drove fast with all the extras on. He was trying to throw the impossible race. James chose a Subaru Legacy Diesel and seemed most excited about the race. He picked the car due to the good mpg as well as the fact that since it's a little larger it would have a larger tank. Richard went with the Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion which claims to have a tank range of about 736 miles. They all chose slightly different routes as well. I'm not going to ruin it all incase you choose to look up the episode to see for yourself, but I will say that all of the cars eventually made it. I know I spoiled it a bit, but I won't tell you the winner...although Google or a click HERE would probably ruin that one for you quickly.

There is some confusion with the measurements and the conversion of theirs and ours. The imperial gallon is slightly larger than a US gallon. I found this other site that discusses this same topic and did the conversions for each car. So with credit given, they state that the Jag is listed at 32.3 mpg which is about 27 for us. The Subaru is listed at 56.6 which is about 47. The VW lists at 88.3 which is about 73.5 mpg. SEVENTY-THREE MILES PER GALLON!

Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion Image Credit:
driveblog.co.uk

My question after watching this show is why do we not have these options here?!

The United States does not have much in the form of choices of non-gasoline cars. We have the hybrids which get better gas mileage, but I don't know that they are the only answer. Finally this year Volkswagon is offering their Jetta TDI and Jetta Sportswagen TDI here. But aside from the VW is there any other diesel commonly available to us here? And why don't we have a car available that can get 73 mpg? The Jetta TDI only gets 41 mpg. Though it's better than other cars in comparison it is a LONG cry from the gas mileage of the Polo BlueMotion.

Before this show I had no idea there were cars out there that could do this. Why does our media make it sound to us like such things are not possible? They say things like they are constantly working to make better cars, but there are better cars available already...just not to us. I especially don't understand when a company like VW which has these cars can have them available in Europe but not in the US. I just can't make sense of it.

Some of our options:

Prius (hybrid) - 48/45 mpg
Ford Fusion & Mercury Milan Hybrids both get 41/36
Honda Insight (hybrid) - 40/43
Smart Car - 33/41 mpg
Jetta & Jetta Sportswagen TDI - 30/41

And the list just keeps going down.

Here is an article discussing the different options available in Europe than here and something noteworthy that I picked out -

"The most fuel-efficient cars in Europe all have fuel efficiency over 64 miles to the gallon..."

"In the United States, the top 10 most fuel-efficient cars have efficiency ranging from 30 miles per gallon to just over 60..."

And here is another great article on MSNBC and worth quoting -

"Adding insult to injury is the fact that nearly two-thirds of the 113 highly fuel-efficient models that are unavailable to American consumers are either made by U.S.-based automobile manufacturers or by foreign manufacturers with substantial U.S. sales operations, such as Nissan and Toyota."

It really is messed up, don't you think?!