I'm sat in a hotel in Atlanta at the moment (I live in the UK, go home tomorrow...) having driven down from NYC via Atlantic City in a "minivan". The first minivan was a Dodge Grand Caravan (in the UK sold as the Chrysler Grand Voyager) - averaged about 13 mpg. The second leg in a Ford Windstar, averaged about 11 mpg. My UK minivan (Vauxhall Zafira) does 35 mpg and still seats seven and cruises at 110mph.
This makes sense in the US where fuel (gas...) is USD0.95 per gallon (about 22 cents / litre, or in UK terms about 15p/litre) but in the UK fuel is around 75p/litre (do the math, thats USD 4.50 a gallon, 81 bucks to fill an 18 gallon tank) so even our large cars (I drive a V6 rover) do 28 mpg or much more average. Diesel cars are popular (to bring this on topic I'm gonna post a picture of my car when I get home) and SUV (or the UK equivalents - we call them off-roaders) are rarely petrol drivne, always diesel. While the US pays so little for its fuel, people will drive what they like. That's the culture. The average engine size in the UK is 1.6 litre, maybe smaller, people think my 2.0litre V6 is extravagent. I come here and a "full size" sedan is 3.5 litre V6 and 19 mpg. I don't complain though.... - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
