From 1980 to 1997 I drove a VW Rabbit Diesel. It got 41 mpg in the city - and I mean stop-and-go rush hour driving, short trips with lots of idling at red lights, etc., the worst possible conditions for mileage. On the highway it got over 52 mpg.

It met all the pollution and safety requirements including the old 5 mph bumper test. Weighed 2200+ pounds, so it wasn't a lightweight. Handled well, fun to drive, simple and easy to work on. Extremely reliable too.

All with the diesel technology of 30+ years ago.

I only let it go because the rust was becoming unmanageable after all those snowy Northeast winters.

GM's awful 1970s diesel cars gave oilburners a bad name in the USA. In Europe, diesels have enormous market share and get incredible mileage, but for various reasons most of them aren't sold here.

Referring to his 1999 Saturn:

"summer...43 MPG regularly on the interstate.

In the winter, with different gasoline formulation, I get 46 MPG.

In the city I get between 30 and 33."

Those are good numbers, but not as good as my 1980 Rabbit Diesel.

"Why is everybody bragging about hybreds when they don't get as good a mileage as a 1999 Saturn 5-speed?"

Which numbers are you looking at?

The Prius hybrid in the Southgate Motor Pool gets about 42 MPG *city* in the summer with ethanol-diluted gasoline. About the same on the highway, but a hybrid doesn't really have an advantage for highway cruising.

The big advantage of hybrids is in stop-and-go, lower-speed driving, because it can recover a lot of the energy other cars waste heating up the brakes. And it doesn't waste energy idling for long periods.

I don't know what happened to Saturn. Until last year the SMP included a 1994 Saturn SL that was a really good car. Economical, reliable, simple. Guess GM couldn't leave success alone?

I know it's bad, yada yada yada, but OMG it's just so good.

And now for a bacon story...

Years ago, a female friend of mine who lives some distance away called up to tell me of her new boyfriend. Invited me down for a weekend to meet him - sort of a pre-family checkout.

From what she described, he sounded like a really good guy for her.

But there was one problem: He liked...liver. Loved it, in fact. She hated the stuff and didn't even want to be in the same house with it. They were practically living together by then and it was a real sore point. Might sound trivial but she was thinking of dumping the guy because of it.

By conventional wisdom, people either love or hate liver, and there's supposedly no converting a liver-hater. But the course of love demanded that an attempt be made.

So I went to her place for the weekend, with a bag of groceries. He really was a good guy or I wouldn't have done the next bit.

I sat them both down at the kitchen table at lunchtime and explained that the reason she didn't like liver was that she'd never had it cooked properly.

I produced a proper iron skillet and fried up some good fresh bacon. Added sliced onions to saute in the bacon fat, then fresh calves' liver. Piled the bacon and onions on top, quick fry on the bottom, flip the liver, quick fry the other side, and then onto warmed plates.

She loved it. He loved it. I had to make more, then go run an imaginary errand so they could have some privacy.

Of course it was the bacon flavor that turned the tide.

They wound up getting married.

The AWESOME POWER of BACON!

You've been with her long enough that, if it were "the right thing", she wouldn't be losing interest. She'd be valuing the good things.

Do not just dump her. Don't offer to wait, either. Just discuss where you want the relationship to go, and see if she wants the same things *with you*.

Hard as it is to accept, it is a common thing for people of all ages to want newness more than stability, and to confuse the initial rush of discovery with true love.