Are Special Economy Editions Worth The Price
by Jeremy Bochenek
If you have been searching for the best car to buy for under $20,000, fuel economy probably has been high on your list when looking for the best new car deals. After all, gas prices won't remain repressed forever. If you are going to buy a car you might as well save as much money as you can when you have to hit the pump. No matter how cheap car loans online are why spend more than you have to?
But as you pull out the newspaper adds, there seems to be a lot of fine print going around as far as high mileage cars are concerned. Ford, Chevy, and Honda new car dealers all have cars under 20,000 that advertise at 40 mpg or more but not all these cheap cars are as advertised. Take the Chevy Cruze for example, which is often advertised at getting over 40 MPG highway. Yet the standard LS trim gets only 36 mpg at a cost of $16,720, compared to the often advertised Chevy Cruze Eco trim gets 42 mpg highway at a cost of $19,245. A difference cost of $2525 for a gain of 6 mpg at best.
The case for the two Ford cars is even more one of semantics. If you visit your new car dealer you'll find that the difference between having the SFE package or not is much smaller. For about $500 you get at most two mpg highway which is hardly worth it even if you are out to save the environment. Better to pocket the $500 and invest it in other green tech if you're that green minded or make those cheap cars cheaper and pocket the money for yourself.
The most surprising of the Eco trims is the Honda Civic however. The base Civic sedan achieves a remarkable 39 mpg for a starting price of $15,805. Really one of the best new car deals out there by itself. Yet to stretch that to 41 mpg to get over the big four-oh means upgrading all the way to the $19,455 Civic HF for a highway mpg of 41. Two mileage difference at the cost of $3650 is hardly worth it no matter what sort of cheap car loans you can get. So are these eco upgrades worth it? Only if you're looking for an environmentally safe way to burn money.
But as you pull out the newspaper adds, there seems to be a lot of fine print going around as far as high mileage cars are concerned. Ford, Chevy, and Honda new car dealers all have cars under 20,000 that advertise at 40 mpg or more but not all these cheap cars are as advertised. Take the Chevy Cruze for example, which is often advertised at getting over 40 MPG highway. Yet the standard LS trim gets only 36 mpg at a cost of $16,720, compared to the often advertised Chevy Cruze Eco trim gets 42 mpg highway at a cost of $19,245. A difference cost of $2525 for a gain of 6 mpg at best.
The case for the two Ford cars is even more one of semantics. If you visit your new car dealer you'll find that the difference between having the SFE package or not is much smaller. For about $500 you get at most two mpg highway which is hardly worth it even if you are out to save the environment. Better to pocket the $500 and invest it in other green tech if you're that green minded or make those cheap cars cheaper and pocket the money for yourself.
The most surprising of the Eco trims is the Honda Civic however. The base Civic sedan achieves a remarkable 39 mpg for a starting price of $15,805. Really one of the best new car deals out there by itself. Yet to stretch that to 41 mpg to get over the big four-oh means upgrading all the way to the $19,455 Civic HF for a highway mpg of 41. Two mileage difference at the cost of $3650 is hardly worth it no matter what sort of cheap car loans you can get. So are these eco upgrades worth it? Only if you're looking for an environmentally safe way to burn money.
