Cheap Gas is Cheapening Life

For a moment I felt like a car guy, a regular Tom or Ray Magliozzi.

There it was, my dream machine from another era, magically rolling into view as the climax to a TV tire commercial: a 1960-something Austin Mini, bright red, the same color as the one I used to own. Like they say, it really brought me back.

Not that the tire ad showed any fondness for this old model. In fact, the admeisters turned the Mini into a laugh prop, a primitive implement, an old shoe on wheels. The message was easily translated: Heard about those $25 tire specials? You won't find anything at this price which fits a real vehicle like the beautiful van and SUV we just paraded before your greedy little eyes. No, the cheapies are only joke tires for joke cars, like the 10-inchers on this pathetic British go-kart.

But the joke, it turns out, is on us -- the tire guys included. The small car, and therefore the smaller tire, is making a comeback, or at least clinging to some lane space next to Tyrannosaurus Wrecks.

The automaker-rubber-petroleum complex finds itself in a weird position lately. For the past few years, oil and gasoline prices in the US have been at historically low levels, comparable to those of the 1960s. Inflation has pumped up the numbers. But the $1 per gallon gas we had last year was actually a bigger steal than the 20-30-some cents per gallon of 30-40 years ago. And the same goes for even the $1.50-1.80 gas of today.

Nevertheless, the language of "crisis" is hanging heavy in the air. And like low thunder from an empty steel drum, historical echoes are bouncing around the American mind.

Mostly these echoes are reverberations from 1973, the only year since World War Two that the US took fuel conservation seriously. With consumers getting nervous about prices at the pump, the automakers aren't selling performance entirely and absolutely in terms of muscle. (SUV sales continue to climb, however.) Honda, for example, is marketing several fuel-efficient models this spring. But the new millennial Honda's conception of "high mileage" is too modest: One model at the top of the list is the Civic 2000 LX with 5-speed manual transmission, which has an EPA mileage rating of 32 city, 37 highway.

More serious is an effort from Toyota, an electric-gas hybrid called the Prius, now being market- and road-tested in selected areas, mostly in California. The Prius comes with a 1.5 liter engine and a nickel metal hydride battery which is recharged by the engine during operation, altogether eliminating the need for recharging stops. This hybrid configuration yields 66 mpg highway, says Toyota, and the car has an advertised range of more than 800 miles.

The Prius sounds pretty good. But in a sense, Toyota is going back to the future, or forward to the past. Compare the Prius to the easily maligned Mini of 40 years ago. My own Mini had a 1.25 liter four-cylinder engine which packed lots of power, and got well over 50 mpg, with nary a bell or whistle attached. This kind of performance was nothing exceptional among imports back then.

Or now.

Consider the auto fleet in Germany. Sure, it's the land of Mercedes and BMW, but according to one travel primer, most German cars get 33 mpg and more. German economy models run in the range of 47-59 mpg. Germans also travel less by car: an average 7,500 miles per year per vehicle, versus around 12,000 miles here. Of course, German drivers and non-drivers alike can get about nicely on the nation's highly developed public transit system, to which the German government has just allocated $70 billion for further improvements.

The German system is founded on a dualism: First, highly efficient cars and public transit allow Germans to cope with high gasoline prices. Last month, gas in Germany cost the equivalent of $3.66 US per gallon, which was well below the cost in Italy, France, and the UK. Second, high gasoline taxes, which account for the high prices, allow Germany to keep its public transit system in good shape and help keep the country's highly-urbanized environment from collapsing in smog.