But Then Again, Just Putting Gasoline In It Might Cost You More Then Having Bodywork Done Someday…
Today I just paid nearly seventy bucks for gasoline. And that was at the Costco gas station where the price is about 25 cents a gallon less then it is most other places. That amounted to just a tad under twenty-one gallons: About sixteen gallons for the car, and another five in the spare gas container I bring along so I don’t have to make the drive to Costco as often.
According to the owner’s manual, Traveler has a 17.43 gallon tank with a 2.11 gallon reserve (that probably works out to some nice round figure in metric…), and I’d run Traveler’s tank down to the last 1/8th. The fuel reserve warning came on around the 1/8th mark, but as I only had to put a bit less then 17 gallons in I’m not sure where they’re drawing the line at the reserve, unless there’s almost a half gallon of it that doesn’t get filled when the gas pump clicks off, which is possible. Anyway, figure since it’s a Mercedes when the gauge reads empty it probably means it.
The rising cost of gasoline is of course, why this all matters to me. The more gas I buy in one go at the Costco, the more I save because I have to figure in the gas I use getting there and back. It’s about eleven miles, so figure about four-tenths of a gallon spent, in order to buy gas at twenty-five cents a gallon less then the local stations charge. At 3.26 a gallon, which is what the Costco gas cost me, let’s say that’s a buck-thirty I spend going to and from Costco. I paid sixty-eight dollars for twenty-one gallons. Around here that would have been about 3.50. So my bill would have been 73.50. I saved five and a half dollars. Subtracting the buck-thirty it was only 4.20 I saved. But that’s another gallon and four-tenths if I use the local price per gallon. Or another way of looking at it, is I get about an extra forty miles. In a year’s worth of local driving, I reckon looking at an extra two-thousand miles roughly, but depending on all the slop in my figures it might be closer to fifteen-hundred. But I have to practically empty my tank before I refuel, to see that kind of savings. If I don’t do that, and I can’t always it just worked out that I could this time, I don’t see nearly that much savings. If I refuel at the half tank mark, the drive to Costco and back eats up the amount of money I saved buying it there.
I’m going to keep on doing this for a while, and watch the numbers, but you know…it might not be worth my doing this, even at twenty-five cents a gallon less.
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 am
Man, that sucks.
But you have to get that first ding, dent, scratch, whatever sooner or later. Would it be less painful or disheartening if you just deliberatly did it yourself? Why let someone ELSE pop it’s cherry? So you might as well go ahead and get a nice big cup of coffee, and just spill it all over the console…THATS going to happen sooner or later anyway too. Think of it as a "Christening". (Or Baptism)
But even my new(used, nearly 25 year old) car was really nicely cleaned out and polished when the guy turned it over to me. It took almost a week, and then that big coffee spill when my paper coffee cup collapsed in my hand schlopping coffee everywhere. I cussed about it, and then relaxed saying "Well, I got that out of the way now…."
A tank of premium costs me almost a third of what I paid for the whole car. Does your car have air-bags for your hedgehog? If not, I suggest you write to Mercades and scold them for over looking THAT!
March 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 am
Well…one advantage to having a mostly plastic interior with vinyl upholstery is that I’m not so terribly worried about spills like that. It’s a ‘C’ class, not an ‘S’ class, with all leather upholstery in it everywhere including the dash and the center console. But I don’t think they even put cup holders in an ‘S’ class.
I didn’t know your Volvo took premium. Volvos are nice cars, but I always thought their thing was to emphasize practicality over luxury. A Volvo is the only other car I’d feel as safe as in an accident as my Mercedes. I think station wagons just accumulate clutter of their own accord. Seriously. Have you ever seen a station wagon that was spotless inside? There’s a BMW wagon that lives a couple blocks down from me that looks a bit like a flea market on the inside.
I think my hedgehog has his own built-in air bags. He’s got his own cupholder too.
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
I would check with a Mercedes mechanic before you make it a habit of running the tank down to low. Some cars have the fuel pump located inside the tank; it uses the fuel as its coolant and lubrication. If you run it to low to often, you might eventually be paying for more than a tank of gas…
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
Yeah… Yesterday was the only time I’ve ever had it so low the reserve alert came up, and I don’t want to be driving it that low all the time anyway. Suppose I just barely make it to the Costco station and they’re closed or out of premium? But…yeah…I should ask about that anyway, while I’m there getting the bumper looked at.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Bumper!? I don’t want to know …
March 24th, 2008 at 1:23 am
"But I don’t think they even put cup holders in an ‘S’ class."
Any car WITHOUT cup holders is just asking for trouble! That makes it that much MORE likely that you’ll spill drinks all over the place! Myself, being a chain-smoking coffee guzzling slob, am ALSO amazed and annoyed by how many cars interior designs just dont think through these things: Putting a cup-holder right in FRONT (Or behind) the gear shift, and an ashtray in a spot where you have to put the gear shift into drive to pull the ashtray out and empty it. And cup holders that might hold a tiny thimble-sized esspresso cup, but not a 62oz cawfee mug. I suspect that those designers dont drink coffee or smoke. Also, putting an ashtray right above the stereo is dumb….ashes floating right into the unit.
And you’re right about station-wagons: It takes a lot longer for them to fill with crap before you have to empty some of it out so you can load more crap into it! But ANY car that I own is going to basically end up a garbage scow….I’m a rolling pack-rat, a slob, AND I hardly ever take out the garbage…..untill I lose a lighter, or full pack of smokes in the mess. hahahahaha.
I’ve still got my old Chevy. The running joke around here is that the Chevy got full, so I had to get another car. I can’t wait until I’m older, and have a whole caravan of shopping carts full of crap to push around all day from the homeless shelter to the library and back.
I AM envious of your car though! Do the vans that Mercades makes (These days) have any kind of good rating? I LOVED the Sprinters they had in Europe (Pre-ford?) But they havn’t been in the USA long enough to see how they last. UPS, FED-Ex and some others are using them more and more.
March 24th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Bumper!? I don’t want to know …
Right Here… Basically, I got rear ended last Friday. Doesn’t look like it was much more then cosmetic damage, but I have to have it looked at by my dealer to make sure.
March 24th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Any car WITHOUT cup holders is just asking for trouble!
I think the the idea is you aren’t supposed to be snacking at all in an $100k+ car. I’ve never seen cup holders in a Maybach, Rolls or Bentley either. Well…I’ve seen champaign bottle coolers in the back seat area of the Rolls and the Maybach. Anyway, it was a joke for years how Mercedes did everything better then the other car makers Except the damn cup holders. Their cup holders have been pretty much a joke right up to the model I have now, which actually has some good ones. I think Mercedes engineers just don’t like the idea of people eating while driving on principal.
On the other hand, driving while smoking is apparently cool with them. From what I hear the Germans still love their cigarettes. A lot of cars being made now don’t even have ash trays. My Accord didn’t. The Mercedes do, and swear to God my car actually has a cigarette pack holder in it under the arm rests.
Mercedes, well actually Daimler, is one of the largest heavy truck makers in the world. They also own/produce Freightliner, Thomas-built, and Western Star. Daimler’s original vision was to produce motors for autos, airplanes and ships…hence the three pointed star logo. Not sure if they still make motors for airplanes and ships, but they’re one of the biggest automotive companies in the world, if you count more then the Mercedes-Benz line of cars. From what I hear at least elsewhere their reputation as a truck maker is pretty solid, they just never really got a good foothold in the U.S. until lately.
I’ve got the pack rat gene too, I just get very frustrated when I can’t find something and that motivates me to be tidy. Also, I’ve been entranced by cars since I was old enough to walk up to one and so I have a bit of reverence for them, which is why I keep mine clean. Apart from enthusiasts, who can sometimes go a little overboard with it, I don’t think most folks really appreciate what a work of…art…the automobile is.