Saturday, September 20, 2008

Saturday morning TV

Falling asleep with the TV on Friday night often leads to waking up to infomercials Saturday morning.

Today, one of these interminable commercials disguised as informative television was for a chain of car dealerships here in Texas that deal almost exclusively with American vehicles. This morning they were hawking Ford cars and trucks.

With some segment of the population becoming more eco-aware, many manufacturers and dealerships tout high gas mileage as a selling point.

Ford, you have a ways to go.

The smooth-talking, spiffy-suited salesman pointed out that the Ford line of Focus sedans get a whopping 28 miles to the gallon (according to Kelly Blue Book, they actually get 22-24 MPG city and 35 MPG highway). Kellys rates the Honda Civic at 40 city/45 hwy.

After the parade of boxy but roundish passenger cars came the SUVs. Now, Kellys rates the Escape at 34 MPG city. Not bad for one of these large, usually unnecessary vehicles. However, that number drops to 30-31 hwy. It almost seems like one would be better off towing your Focus through the city where the Escape gets better mileage then using the smaller car for out of town travel. But then, the weight of the car would reduce the mileage of the truck, and then what do you do with the truck? Silly, no?

And to drive a final nail into our environment's coffin, one can purchase a brand new Ford F-150 for no money down and only $399 a month. So, with the dealership's apparently very liberal credit policy, almost anyone can own a behemoth work truck that gets an abysmal 13/17 MPG.

Of course, all of these vehicles have practical function in most cases, but does anyone really need a 3.5 ton work truck for tooling around town?

Well, do you?

1 comment:

GregoryB said...

I've seen that infomercial. It's very addicting. I always want to buy a car even though I do not need one.