Gasoline Mileage

In an announcement welcomed by U.S. auto manufacturers Friday, the Transportation Department proposed lowering gasoline mileage standards for 1989-90 model cars. Transportation Secretary James H. Burnley IV scheduled a hearing on the proposal for Sept. 14. Under the suggested new standards, fuel consumption of all cars built by a U.S. manufacturer would be required to average between 26.5 and 27.5 miles per gallon. This would be as much as a mile per gallon below the 27.5-m.p.g.

The Internal Revenue Service, citing the drain that high gasoline prices are having on people's finances, said Monday that it was raising the automobile mileage rate that businesses and others can claim as tax deductions. The agency said the optional standard rate to calculate deductible operating costs for business vehicles would rise to 58.5 cents a mile from 50.5 cents for the final six months of 2008.

In an age of disposable diapers and razors, Albert Klein has clung to his beat-up, off-white 1963 Volkswagen with a devotion that puts most marriages to shame. The car's fenders are dented, its upholstery is torn, its paint is chipped and faded. But the one thing you can say for this humble Beetle is that it runs--and runs and runs.

The first rule of selling station wagons is don't talk about station wagons. That's the marketing plan behind the stealthy return of one of the auto world's most practical -- and most ridiculed -- designs. For years, the mere idea of a wagon has been poison in the car world, resurrecting queasy carpool memories of ungainly giants like the Ford Country Squire and the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser for a whole generation of drivers.

The gas guzzlers are back. The Environmental Protection Agency's annual survey of auto gasoline mileage released Thursday shows more models than ever paying the special gas-guzzler tax on fuel-hungry cars, most of them expensive European luxury models. But the mileage champs are unchanged for the fourth straight year. The top two cars are again Japanese: a General Motors Corp. import and a Honda.

For the third year in a row, the three-cylinder Chevrolet Sprint has captured the top rating in the annual gasoline mileage tests of the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no change in the second spot, either, held by a Honda Civic. The 1,875-pound Sprint Metro model was rated at 54 miles per gallon in city driving and 58 m.p.g. on the highway, the same figures recorded for the Sprint ER last year. The Honda Civic CRX HF tested at 50 m.p.g. city, 56 m.p.g. highway.

The good news: I got a promotion. The bad news: I landed in one of my newspaper's suburban bureaus -- a wonderful spot, but about 35 miles from my front door. I didn't own a car, the job started in two weeks, gas prices were climbing, and a 70-mile commute (instead of 10 friendly minutes by bus) was looking expensive. The Insight, Honda's two-seater hybrid with amazing gas mileage, sounded almost too good to be true. A lot of reports said it was -- real drivers don't get the numbers Honda touts.

Texaco Inc. on Tuesday laid claim to a long-sought gasoline additive--one that reduces engine deposits in a car's combustion chamber that can cause rough idling, poor acceleration and power loss. The company said its new ingredient, to be incorporated in all grades of Texaco gas beginning March 1, also improves mileage and performance while lowering emissions of nitrogen oxides, a smog-forming air pollutant, by an average of 15%.

It's a brutally effective ad about automotive speed and power. It is a television spot that seems perfect for the times, but one that makes highway safety advocates blanch. "For lunch, the Porsche 944 Turbo generally prefers Ferraris . . . " the unseen announcer gravely intones as a red Porsche drifts through a corner in slow motion on the screen, " . . .although it has been known, occasionally, to snack on Corvettes."

When a little-known company from California placed a $1-billion order for Smart mini-cars from DaimlerChrysler last spring, the struggling auto giant said thanks, but no thanks. So the company, an environment-conscious distributor of alternative vehicles called ZAP, went shopping and found what it was looking for -- in Brazil. There, a small start-up called Obvio was busy developing a sporty and economical mini-car for export.

We have established that GM knows how to make a two-mode hybrid. Witness the Green Car of the Year*, the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, which utilizes a powerful electric motor in concert with an internal combustion engine. Still, GM continues to build its "mild" hybrids, using the belt-alternator-starter system, yielding in the Chevy Malibu a grand total of 2 mpg in city/highway fuel economy over the standard four-cylinder.

The hatch is back. After enjoying a brief vogue in the 1970s, the hatchback is again a familiar sight in U.S. showrooms. And unlike the first time around, when misfires such as the AMC Gremlin, Ford Pinto and Chevy Chevette carried the flag, the latest crop features some of the hottest -- and hottest-selling -- vehicles in the market. The Honda Fit, Mini Cooper, Volkswagen Rabbit and Nissan Versa all notched double-digit sales increases in July, when new-vehicle sales were down overall.

Federal fines levied against automakers for failing to meet vehicle mileage requirements may be too weak to encourage production of more fuel efficient cars and trucks, Congress' investigative arm said. Automakers paid $678 million in penalties in the model years 1983 through 2005, but the fine has not increased in a decade and may not be a strong deterrent for making less fuel efficient vehicles, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A new feature on the federal government's gas mileage website is letting consumers know what revised ratings for 2008 models will do to those fuel economy numbers that almost no one gets after they start driving their new vehicles. As expected when the new test was unveiled last year, today's most fuel-efficient vehicles will lose the most. Toyota's Prius hybrid, now rated at 60 miles per gallon in city driving, will drop 20% to 48 mpg.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which sees the success of its new Lancer sedan as critical to reversing a dramatic slump in its U.S. sales, already faces a handicap as it prepares to launch the compact car in March. Competing in a segment in which gas mileage usually figures prominently in buyers' decisions, the 2008 Lancer will be the first vehicle to be rated under tough new federal fuel economy standards scheduled to be announced today.

The good news: I got a promotion. The bad news: I landed in one of my newspaper's suburban bureaus -- a wonderful spot, but about 35 miles from my front door. I didn't own a car, the job started in two weeks, gas prices were climbing, and a 70-mile commute (instead of 10 friendly minutes by bus) was looking expensive. The Insight, Honda's two-seater hybrid with amazing gas mileage, sounded almost too good to be true. A lot of reports said it was -- real drivers don't get the numbers Honda touts.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which sees the success of its new Lancer sedan as critical to reversing a dramatic slump in its U.S. sales, already faces a handicap as it prepares to launch the compact car in March. Competing in a segment in which gas mileage usually figures prominently in buyers' decisions, the 2008 Lancer will be the first vehicle to be rated under tough new federal fuel economy standards scheduled to be announced today.

For those of us who still believe that the only people who really need SUVs are National Geographic journalists and members of Doctors Without Borders, it was a delicious moment. While attempting to navigate the Trader Joe's parking lot on Hyperion in Silver Lake, an SUV on the larger end of hugeness--an Expedition or an Incursion or a Coastal Invasion, one of those--was finding it difficult to moor, er, park. And so it decided to back out of the parking lot.

When a little-known company from California placed a $1-billion order for Smart mini-cars from DaimlerChrysler last spring, the struggling auto giant said thanks, but no thanks. So the company, an environment-conscious distributor of alternative vehicles called ZAP, went shopping and found what it was looking for -- in Brazil. There, a small start-up called Obvio was busy developing a sporty and economical mini-car for export.

The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed higher fuel mileage standards for most sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans, but environmentalists assailed the plan -- which spares gas-guzzling giants such as the Hummer H2 and Ford Excursion -- as insufficient. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, standing next to pumps at a Mobil station in Los Angeles where premium fuel was selling for $2.