High Mileage Cars: no mystery

High mileage cars: not a mystery
Meade Fischer

There are plans to mandate 62 mpg standards for the cars of the future. Currently, we have the hybrid, a bit expensive, but capable of 48mpg. This is all exciting stuff, almost rocket science. Or is it?

High mileage cars are not a high tech mystery. We've had them before and let them slip away. In 1992 I bought a new Geo Metro, one of the least expensive cars on the market. A few years later, they were renamed Chevrolet Metro, had a bigger engine, poorer performance and less mileage. But the original was a wonder.

This little car, which held four people comfortably, had a three cylinder engine, displacing 1000 cc, about the same as an average motorcycle. People who didn't own them claimed that they were too underpowered for the highway and that the small engines would wear out in a few miles.

The week after we bought the car, my wife and one of her friends took off, along with lots of luggage for a week, to Ashland Oregon. They filled the 10 gal. tank in Gilroy, and after driving 70 mph up the interstate with the air conditioner going full blast, they still had gas when the arrived in Ashland, averaging 48mpg.

We drove the car for nine trouble-free years, never getting less than 45 mpg, even with a sixteen foot kayak strapped on top. Every ten or twenty thousand miles I'd have the brakes checked, figuring it was time to have them replaced, and each time the mechanic would shake his head and say they were fine.

at 120 thousand miles, we sold the car to a friend, who moved to Nebraska with all her belongings in it. Since then she married, and now her husband uses it for a work car. We visited them recently. The car, which now sits outside summer and winter, still looks the same. The husband says that there is a minor oil leak and that he finally did have to get new brakes, as well as a new clutch. The Geo now has 220,000 miles and gets a consistent 45 miles per gallon, down slightly from when it was new. Also, it never fails to start.

So, it's possible to build a fun, peppy, high mileage car that last indefinitely and is cheap to buy. Now, what's the problem with turning out a few million more like that?