When Old Is New Again

Thanks to the rising cost of gasoline, small cars from the '90s are making a comeback. Used vehicles such as the Ford Festiva and Geo Metro, which had been selling for $1100 just a few months ago, are now going for as much as $6,000.

Thanks to their small engines, many of these cars used to get mileage comparable to today's hybrids. The Metro, for example, had a three cylinder engine. They were also lighter than today's cars. That's what gives them the advantage in mileage over newer cars.

And therein lies the rub: The reason those old cars were lighter was that they lacked such safety amenities like air bags, ABS brakes, and other collision avoidance systems. This prompts an interesting question from Jon Linkov of Consumer Reports:

"What is your life worth for that extra 10 miles per gallon?"

That may seem like a valid question, but it's misleading. Saving ten miles a gallon translates to maybe a dollar per 30 miles. Most of us, assuming we're not Britney Spears, don't get into accidents every 30 miles. So to compare the value of our lives to a savings of ten miles on a single gallon is simply wrong. It's like Bush and McCain trying to compare the Iraq war to the fight against Nazi Germany.

More importantly, the Geo Metro never cooked the intelligence in an effort to justify the invasion of a sovereign nation, thereby destabilizing the entire Middle East.

Rather, you need to look at the safety issue in terms of likelihood of a major collision. If you're a good driver, and the odds are that you may only experience a potentially fatal crash every 300,000 miles, then the question becomes "Is your life worth a savings of $10,000? Kind of changes a little bit, doesn't it?

Of course, this also assumes your Festiva doesn't get run over by an Abrams tank in Baghdad.