Automotive Artifact from the Past

I have often mentioned my fondness for weird little cars. As a sign of that, I was reading an old Edmund's review of the 2001 Toyota Echo. They really hated the car. It was too expensive, too weird, too... well, they just hated it. But the Echo remained pretty much unchanged until 2005 when Toyota retired the little beastie and used it innards for the Scion and the Yaris.

Here is what I find fascinating as an historian: Edmund's final sneering put-down.

In European and Japanese city centers, where the Echo is called the Vitz and is purchased by people with fewer and more expensive parking spaces to utilize than dwellers of Manhattan, this car makes perfect sense, particularly when overseas fuel prices are factored into the equation. It is a wonderful little low-speed, high-mileage, no-fuss urban commuter. But in America, where it takes three or four full days of high-speed motoring on some of the cheapest gas in the world to get from one side of the country to the other, Echo is ill-suited to the driving most of the people do most of the time.

Notice how the high mpg is of no interest to a REAL American. And most of us are going to drive across country? Maybe, but most of us, really, spend most of our time driving less than 35 miles round trip, usually on our daily commute and our trips to Wal-Mart.

BTW, the EPA mileage they are so smarmy about was 34/41. How much would you like one now that gas is $4? For a slightly more appreciative review, read this.

so here's my plan. Buy a low mileage base version of the 2005 model, the one with standard transmission and no AC. Then cut the back seats out, and anything else that isn't absolutely necessary. Ought to get almost 45 plus mpg.