EXACTLY
!
I had a 1978 VW Rabbit, with a Diesel in it. BEST CAR I have ever owned, by far! It got 52 MPG. Yes, FIFTY TWO MILES PER GALLON of diesel fuel, which in the early 80's cost about 65 CENTS per gallon! The fuel tanks was 10 gallons, which meant a FULL tank of fuel was under $7 (yes, you read correctly, less than 7 dollars!). And for 7 gardamn dollars I would travel 500 miles!
FIVE HUNDRED MILES for SEVEN DOLLARS! I was in college at the time, and my school was exactly 225 miles from my home on Long Island. So $7 would get me a round trip to and from school. I would take 3 other passengers AND their baggage, and charge $30 each for the round trip which was bargain for them. Meanwhile, I had a profit of $83, read: BEER money for the next few weeks (hey, Schlitz was 99 cents a sixpack back then!) before I made a run home again. That Rabbit had 250k miles on it, when an old girlfiend of mine wrecked it. It was still running perfect, and looked perfect, probably good for another 100k if it hadn't been wrecked.
What KILLS me about all this is, we are now 40 GARDAMN years later and we can't buy a frukin car that gets 30 MPG! We can send 6 guys up to space, let them live up their for 6 months with no extra fuel or food..... We can send a dune buggy up to mars, and drive it around via remote control taking pictures and video all while doing science lab projects ON MARS sending all the data back to earth millions and millions of miles away!
BUT your telling me we can't make a simple CAR that gets the same or better fuel economy that my 4 door hatchback got in 1978? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
This just KILLS me!