[Fat Charlie]

Outliers. Yeah. You know, silly and ineffective. But is modding for performance really something that only a few crazies do? Is getting to 60 or making it 1/4 mile really the only measure of performance? Is downforce the only "real" reason to change aero? Is pulling more gees the only measure of tire performance? The only reason that there's no market for economy performance parts is that the driver has to be involved in getting the performance, and that's hard to sell: a window sticker that gets you 10 hp will sell, but one that claims to get you 10 mpg gets laughed at.

When I came here I was tearing it up in a Subaru with a turbo. I tried to not waste gas, as such, but didn't know how to do it right. It was a 19 mpg car that I generally got 22 mpg in and my first tank after coming here was over 28 mpg. With even just light hypermiling that no one else in the car noticed I made family vacations across the state and back without having to fill up. Piddling gains, you know?

When I replaced the Subaru I bought with mpg in mind. Sure, the car I bought is "only" a 29 mpg car, but I'd seen what other users here had gotten with theirs. If I got EPA in the Fit, a Monday morning fill up would be followed by a Thursday morning fill up. With what I average in it, if I have a light weekend then a Monday morning fill up can make it all the way to the next Monday evening. There's a lot of value in that even at today's gas prices. Back when I bought the Fit, prices were a little higher: in the first 6 months my gas and loan payments were a couple hundred bucks more than gas alone would have been (for the same miles driven) in the POS SUV I'd been driving in between cars. Tons of value there.

If that's being an outlier, I'll take it without embarrassment.