Word: minivanning
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...official: our minivan is a toxic asset...
...idea, I realize, is to lure the Von Drehle clan out of our gas hog and into a phone booth-sized vehicle powered by switchgrass and meditation. Unfortunately, with four kids, all in grade school, we need a minivan. So is this program for us? To find out, I took a ride on the information superhighway to www.fueleconomy.gov, which is an easy way to compare the efficiency of just about every car imaginable...
...Maybe we should buy American, though. I summoned up the stats for the new Chrysler Town & Country - though not without trepidation. Back in the day, Chrysler invented the minivan and made a lot of money on them, but then they had a '70s flashback and let themselves get creamed by the Japanese...
...pocket the large money, the $4,500, I would need to find a buggy that averages five or more miles per gallon above our current wreck's fuel intake. But that's an easy search on this website. In a matter of seconds I discovered the Mazda 5 minivan, with manual transmission, which averages 24 miles per gallon, spews just 4.1 tons of carbon and sips a mere 7.6 barrels per year. It's a van that a guy could proudly drive to a lunch with Al Gore and the Dalai Lama, with just one downside: evidently we would have...
...that my family's automotive path has been replicated in millions of garages across America. Unlike me, my kids didn't grow up in the backseat of a Pontiac. They grew up in the backseat of a Honda Accord, then a Toyota Camry and finally a Toyota Sienna minivan. So guess what? I suspect that when it's their turn to buy their first new cars, they'll be looking at the brands they know best, just as their father did a generation ago. Their old man wishes, in his heart, that they could buy a Pontiac. But his brain...