[camaro-dreamer]

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

A common mistake people make is they look at increased fuel economy as "found money". It's not, and it's pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. (And may end up being an actual negative investment).

Let's take the cadillac ATS discussed above as an example. I will round the numbers to make the math easier.

If the 2.0T makes 33MPG, it will use 3030 gallons of fuel to go 100K miles.
If the 3.6 makes 30MPG, it will use 3333 gallons of fuel to go 100K miles.

For all those big economy numbers (an awesome 3 more MPGS) you save 303 gallons over 100,000 miles. That means if gas costs $4.00 a gallon, you saved $1,212 over the 100,000 miles.

My contention is that it costs the consumer MORE than $1212 in the increased price of the car to make those 3MPGs than the consumer actually saves by driving the car.

According to the "build your own" for the Cadillac ATS the base prices are:

2.5 = MSRP Starting at $33,990
2.0T = MSRP Starting at $35,795

As far as I can tell comparing the trim levels, the 2.5 and 2.0T models are equipped the same except for the engine, so we can see that adding a turbo raises the price of an an I4 engine by ($35,795 - $33,990) = $1,805!

I can't directly compare the V6 model to the 2.0T because they obscure the price of the V6 engine by adding a boatload of extra options to the base V6 trim level, but I would guess that the V6 engine is more than $1,212 less than the 2.0T.

So, people pay up front for what they think is a huge savings in fuel economy, when the real world shows that they actually pay more up front for an efficient car over what they would spend over the life of the vehicle that has the less efficent but more affordable engine.

Once you add in the interest the buyer pays on the higher priced "efficient" engine, versus the interest earned by banking that money and paying it over time for slightly more fuel... well the results are even more skewed.

So, all the arguments being made for the I4T Camaro because it saves fuel are pretty much non starters. GM could build a really nice basic V8 Camaro for a really nice low price, and it would be an awesome platform to mod because it would be so inexpensive.

People interested in saving gas could be encouraged to run the figures and see for themselves that paying up front for fuel savings is costing them money. They would then jump at the chance to get a V8 Camaro with no fuel "stigma" clouding their judgement.

It's a win-win!

The analysis is even a bit worse than you contended. The 2.0T is recommended to use premium whereas the v6 and naturally aspirated 2.5 use regular unleaded. Therefore, all of those gallons of fuel in the 2.0T cost more.