Bear with me here, I have a real answer to this. The answer is the Toyota Prius. My Dad purchased one of these a couple of months ago and I borrowed it for a week because I had a lot of traveling to do. The car is amazing. Running around getting 50 MPG is just plain cool. Now, I am not saying everyone should go out and buy these. I drive a Mazda pickup for a daily driver because I haul a lot of stuff around for my business. My toy car is my 72 Dodge Polara, which gets about 10-12 MPG, and a 73 Fury Wagon which gets about the same. My point here is the Prius is a toy, a game if you will. You can watch instantly the gas mileage you get as you run down the road and you really learn what you do in a car that affects the gas mileage. When new drivers are in drivers ed, they should be forced to drive a car like this so they know how to get the best mileage out of a car. If we made this small change, it could save people a lot in gas and lessen the US's dependence on foreign oil.
It also makes traffic almost a joy. I got stuck in a traffic jam for 20 minutes and never got over 10 MPH. This was the coolest thing ever because the whole time the car was running on the battery and I was getting 99 MPG! It was a game and I was winning. We have a contest in our family to see who can do the best on one tank, I think I am in the lead with 52.4 MPG on one tank. It makes traffic fun!
Car companies say they don't make cars that get good gas mileage because people don't want them. I say look at the 6 month waiting list for a Prius and the fact that Big SUV sales are down 30% this year and let them look at those numbers.
