Green cars old school

Cars.  I briefly owned a 96 Honda civic.  It was a great car.  It had just under three hundred thousand kilometers on it and the best part was even with all those Kim's and it being 16 years old when it died, it got amazing gas mileage.  It could get 800kms on fifty liters.  The Honda had a forty liter tank with an additional ten as reserve that was understood that you did not use normally, but I had call to use on occasion.  The first real trip I took on it I missed the last gas station for one hundred kms, up north where there were only a few placed at strategic locations.  I was driving fast, 100 kph, and if I had been driving slower I would not have had need to worry.  At 100 km/h, I got nearly 700 kms on it, dipping in to the reserve.  If I had been more cautious and traveled the speed limit I would have gone much further.  As it is everyone I talked to was amazed about how far I got.  Disbelief is the word.

I once had a fuel pump problem, it stopped working.  When the fuel pump stopped working the gas gauge dropped to zero.  I told the garage this and that I had only driven 400km and it had half a tank left.  In disbelief they told me I had run out of gas and put gas in it calling me an idiot behind my back.  They then had to replace the fuel pump and then I had 3/4 of a tank; I checked at the gas pump when I filled it up.  

Why I brought that story up is that no one believed that an old car could get better mileage than a new car.  Most of the North American cars coming off the assembly lines today do not get e fuel efficiency of a Japanese car of sixteen years ago. Some do now, some even have better mileage, but they are hybrids or electric cars.  Honda also has a hybrid civic, so I bet they have even better mileage.  How can one expect a North American car company to to play catchup with a company twenty years ahead of them?

My new car is an other old Honda civic with great gas mileage too.  GM, Ford, the rest, you suck!  You deserve to lose market share if you can't keep up.  Too bad Boonieville, can't get past the 50s . . ..