Inside the Mind of the Celtic Savage

Howdy yall as some of you know I used to have a 2003 Honda Insight
It was the Caddilac of hybrids as john travolta once said Got 70 mpg+ and it actually did to however it was not near as green as I was hoping.

Hybrids have a price premium and unless you can afford $21k you may be better off buying something a little less expensive sure you will save gas but you will hemmorage money in other places.

I financed the $21k over 6 years at a pretty decent rate of 7% so my monthly payment was $350. Due to the safety features and such my insurance was pretty cheap as well Full coverage out the woo for $120 a month
and here is the best part all the gas I was saving with the 110 mile commute. Sure it took a slightly more expensive oil then a regular car but I am “Cutting my fuel bill in half” so a $30 a month oil change isnt that bad is it?

Well now that I have grown up and am filing bankruptcy because of too much car debt. I bought a Green (color) 1994 Ford escort for the princley sum of $700 cash it gets about 30 mpg and only has liability insurance at $99/6 months and uses regular ole 5w30 that I can get with a filter for about $20

So here is the head to head comparison

The Insight first and the Ford second Gas is 3.39/ gallon as of this morning and the commute is 110 miles round trip. FIGHT

2003 Honda Insight uses 1.57 gallons of gasoline to drive 110 miles. @ 3.39 = 5.32
1993 Ford Escort uses 3.66 gallons of gasoline to drive 110 miles @ 3.39 = 12.41

Hoever all the other incidental charges add up quick
Other costs with the insight were 11.50/ day car payment 3.94/day insurance and .98/day oil so the over all cost of commuting is 21.74

Other costs with the Escort were 0/day carpayment .54/day insurance and .65/day oil bringing the over all cost of commuting to 13.6

So there ya have it folks the side by side comparison between 2 simalarly sized cars I save 8.14/day by driving a paid for compact car instead of some flashy hybrid. Incase you are wondering that is a savings of $2971.10 a year or 2 free months of medications from the post yesterday.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.