"Roland Perry" wrote in message
.uk...
In message , at 16:09:36 on Sun, 28 Aug
2005, David Spiro remarked:
Just saw a news piece last night here in the states on the impact of
rising
gas prices over in London. While they touched on many things, the two
things
that stuck out for me were the increase in fuel efficient car usage,

Fuel efficiency is an important characteristic when choosing a car, but
this isn't a new thing. Cars are, on average, much smaller and more
efficient than those in the USA. Thinking of some common models, the
Mercedes "E" series is regarded here as a very big car, and a BMW X5 or
Range Rover is about the largest vehicle anyone would ever buy.

Despite the current high price of gas, it has not risen as fast as
inflation.

I'm surprised that it's risen at less than the rate of inflation. Since I
started keeping records of my fuel consumption and fuel charges, the price
has risen from about 45 pence to 95 pence between 1993 and 2005. So that's
just over a 100% increase in 12 years or an average of about 9% per year. I
wonder what the average rate of inflation has been over that period? I know
it used to be a lot higher than the 2-3% it is now, but I bet the average
isn't as high as 9%.