Taxes in the UK for each litre - not even a gallon.
and diesel
Slightly out of date though. The downside of tax is the cost. The upside of it is that it insulates us to some extent from world oil price spikes - the cost of a barrell has more than doubled since last summer but uk petrol has risen about 25%.
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The sad part is that if we had artificially high gas prices, then we would have more small fuel-efficient cars to choose from. The Japanese didn't storm into the USA with ground-up car designs to solve our gas crisis problems in the 1970's, they just sold us what they were already building.
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So did we - the Europeans. The Japanese advantage was that what they built was better engineered, better designed and up to date. I read a book written by a tech executive from the 1970s fuel squeeze when he parked his Cadillac and bought a Nissan (or Toyota or Subaru, can't recall exactly).
What amazed him was that the Nissan never failed, everything worked every time and apart from servicing he never had to visit the dealer for anything compared to the Caddy which rattled, smoked and would regularly go out of tune or wear some service part out very quickly and was requiring constant attention. He sold the Caddy and kept the Nissan.
Same over here - as soon as people got used to Honda, Nissan (Datsun) and Toyota reliability they never went back to British cars which by that time were so badly built that the rear windows would fall out when they were jacked up.
Mind you even Honda cock up sometimes. I was reading about the Civic Hondamatic last night - 2 speed MANUAL gearbox and torque converter. Or maybe it was a joke.