PF on Small Cars, like Beetles

From Hummer Saturn gone thread:

Heh... sorry Don, that niggled at me a little then I happened to notice your avatar. Not a Conscious jibe, believe me.

And who was it just got a classic VW bus? Not to you either.

But here's the thing: I owned TWO original Beetles. NEVER got the gas mileage others claimed to get, even when I tried for one whole tank of gas.. best ever got was 21 mpg mostly highway commute.

Others CLAIMED 28 -30 mpg. I call bullshit! You'd have to REALLY be 'eco-driving' to get that with the carbureted model. My dad had a squareback with the slightly bigger engine and Bosch EFI and he got 26-28.

But here's the problem. .. The beetle was WAY fun to drive and had great handling compared to h'amurican cars. And if a car is anywhere NEAR fun to drive, there's no way you 'eco-drive' it.

Ecodriving is to Driving as Chess is to Dodgeball.

A great handling car with a small engine to me has an accelerator with two positions: On and OFF. That's how I drove my beetles, how I drove my Toyota Corona, how I drove my 93 Ford Probe 4 cyl... and how I mostly drove my mustang SVO 2.3 turbo.

The worst mileage of all those was the beetle.

 

Happenstance I just ran across this PJ O'Rourke column:

The End of Our Love Affair with Cars
You have to read it. Nowhere in there does it mention the Beetle. If he did mention it, it probably would be to link it to the end of the love affair.



Thing is, despite it was fun to drive most dont look back at the Beetle with that in mind. The VW was not an automotive icon so much as it was linked with a realm of counterculture ideas and intellectual urban lifestyle.

That first joint you smoked? VW or Dodge Charger?

Tie Dyes? VW Bus or '57 chev?

The Anti-Beetle:



These things were BEER, Blondes and Rock'n'Roll; Stones, not Jefferson Airplane.