I will work for Gas!

Gas Prices

How are you going to change what you do with your collector car now that fill up more than a set of tires? No kidding, I went to the gas station to fill up the motor home with diesel and paid more for a tank of fuel than I paid for my first car! That just isn’t right.

If I fill up the tank on all of our cars I will have more money invested in fuel for those vehicles than I had in the savings account when my kids were in College! What are we supposed to do?

Are we going to park our cars and just look at them? Are we going to sell them? Are we going to convert them over to electric motors? Are we going to drive more now because next year we will have no chance to buy fuel? Are we going to siphon gas out of the neighbor’s car?

My answer is no to all of the above. However, in all reality we can’t just keep doing what we have always done. At 10 mpg it will cost $12 in gas to go across town to eat a $5 Coney Dog at the local Sonic. The alternative is to drive the wife’s HHR and it costs $4 in gas. It isn’t nearly as much fun as driving the old collectibles.  However, going to the cruise-in is as much entertainment for me as $15 or $20 bucks for tickets for the two of us to go to a movie and we still have the price of fuel to get to the movie.

I think we might see more late model computer controlled fuel injected motors with overdrive transmissions in our collector cars. We have one and it makes things a little more enjoyable but not as nostalgic. These modifications do increase mileage a little closer to what modern cars are getting.

Let me run some numbers for you. I don’t think many of us drive more than 3,500 miles per year in our collector cars no matter how many we own. Let’s assume you are getting 12 mpg with your car. At $4 per gallon that is just shy of $1,200 per year. Drive 1,500 miles per year and it is only $500. Sure that is a lot of scratch either way but what price are your dreams and memories worth?

Two years ago gas was more like $2 per gallon so it was half the price. That means this year it will cost another $250 too $600 to have fun with your old car..

Personally, I will drive less and use my daily driver more. Next time we buy a new car it will be a vehicle with increased mileage. However, I am keeping the toys and I intend to use them! If the price of fuel gets so high I can’t afford to drive my toys then the entire Country is going to be in a big hurt. Every item we own gets transported in someway and the high price of fuel will drive the cost of everything up eventually.

This isn’t that different from what happened in the 70s and we adjusted to that, it hurt but we adjusted. We will again, don’t panic but keep working on that deal I saw on TV last week that zaps regular water with sound waves and causes it to explode! True Story!

Can you see it now? We will be driving down the road in our V8s with water in the tank and music under the hood! We always said a well tuned engine is MUSIC to the ears!