Just after Christmas, I read Seams Unlikely, an autobiography by Nancy Zieman. While Zieman likely falls outside the radar for many of us, she may be well known to your wife, mother, or daughter (which is how I learned about her). As the host of Sewing With Nancy, she has been on television since 1982 and her show is broadcast on most PBS stations in the United States. She is also the founder of Nancy’s Notions based in Bear Creek, Wisconsin.
As an aside, her story is quite compelling. How Zieman overcame several formidable challenges, such as her facial paralysis, to build a multi-million dollar business is the true meat of the story and well worth reading. She is a highly practical, business-savvy person and possesses a very charming girl-next-door personality.
From her book, I suspect Zieman to be somewhat of an automotive fan. In addition to mentioning a Buick and Rambler being in the family during her childhood (she was born in 1953 or 1954), she speaks repeatedly of her first car.
What was it?
Nothing other than a 1971 Ford LTD.
While it seems the car was quite reliable, Zieman said it had a 10 mpg appetite for fuel–quite painful for a young professional in the mid-1970s. Hey, isn’t there always a cost associated with unparalleled style and comfort? She never referred to any of her other vehicles with any specific information, just “the wagon” or “the SUV.” Yes, my friends, the ’71 Ford LTD once again flexes its muscular dynamo of raw animal magnetism, continuing to prove it is no mere mortal of a car.
It sounds like an LTD was Nancy’s most inefficient car. What was yours?
98 Toyota Sienna. Which means I’ve never truly owned a guzzler.
My Vauxhall Cresta PC had an appetite for the hard stuff but it was reliable.My Comet and Javelin were 6 cylinder economy cars(economical compared to a big V8).Come to think of it I’ve had a string of gas guzzlers(Ford Zephyr 6 & European Granada V6.)My Sunbeam Rapier auto was a thirsty beast for a 1725 4 cylinder car rarely managing better than low 20s Still all of them gave a lot better MPG than the LTD though!.
Oh, that’s a no-brainer. I live 11km from the office, and there was a company car in the house which meant most weekend trips were on the Fuelcard. So for about 7 years I drove a 450 SEL 6.9 for the commute. Yep, there was traffic both ways and when the weekly fill topped $100 even I recognised it was not the most practical ride so it got parked. That was over 5 years ago. Do I win anything?
All of them. And so worth it.
For just under a year, I was driving a Jeep Liberty Renegade nearly every day to work. Admittedly, it was quite comfortable. But at 4,000 lbs., not efficient as a commuter.
Economical transport for my young family circa 1990, donated to us by a friend’s widow when we moved here from the UK. It was a little different to drive than the Renault 4 we had previously owned. Subsequent acquisition of a Mk. II Jetta Diesel raised our fleet average to 30 mpg …
Ohhh, seriously cool Oldsmobile! I have an unnatural thing for 1964 Oldsmobiles, especially the big Ninety Eight. If you came from the UK, this big Oldsmobubble had to be some real culture shock.
’68 Plymouth Fury with a transplanted 440 and a 4-barrel. Single-digit MPG was a fact of life for that car. I could actually see the gas gauge dropping when I had it up to about 90 on the freeway.
But it was glorious.
Hey, I had similar. A ’69 Fury II (AKA Dodge Phoenix) sedan with a 440/750 Holley transplant. Refitting the Carter improved drivability but the experience parallels yours. This is why the 6.9 looked frugal. Mileage is still better than the 2 barrel 318/Torqueflite it replaced in daily service.
68 Dodge Coronet R/T
493 ci stroked big block Wedge and a 4 speed. Its currently in my daily driver rotation along with a 69 Charger, 78 Trans Am and 73 Grand Prix; its also for sale and will be replaced with a 440 Six Pack Road Runner which will also see daily driver duties once its deemed reliable enough.
I once got 13 mpg with it at a constant 65 mph but usually it stays around 9-10 mpg and I drive it to work, to run errands, and all the normal stuff you expect a car to do, often.
Im a car guy. The drive is more important to me than mpg.
Amen.
You sir are a kindred spirit! Both in being a true gearhead and a Mopar guy!
thanks man! My automotive philosophy is a car that is not driven is not a car but a garage ornament and I cant afford garage ornaments.
Once the R/T is sold, my Road Runner will have an even bigger engine with more carbs. Mopar hell yeah! but I like B-O-Ps too.
I had a 72 Tradesman with the 400 and I was lucky to get 13 on the few highway drives I dared to take it on. Easily 10 and under in town. Still a great rig to haul drumkits to gigs.
1979 Lincoln Continental. 8 to 10 mpg. Good car though very comfortable and reliable and it looked impressive. I kind of miss it.
1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham, it averaged 12’s or worse with a heavy foot, the 1976 Grand Safari did a little better.
Dodge Diplomat @ 15 MPG average.
’78 Cougar with an edelbrock intake, cam, headwork, headers and double pumper Holley carb. 9.9 mpg on trips.
Probably my ’69 Ambassador 343. The best recorded mileage was 14 on a trip; it was usually in the 10-11 range.
My ’74 Mazda RX-4 would get about 14 around town, 19 on a trip. The RX-2s were about 1 MPG better.
1975 Buick Park Avenue Limited four door hardtop, 455 4bbl, purchased for the princely sum of $50 (yes $50, no missing zero). Got it from the local Ford dealer who couldn’t find anyone to haul it away, $50 was the document fee at the time so really it was free. Averaged 9 mpg on my daily commute, which luck would have it was only 5 miles each way. Drove it for several years (2003-2006) until the rust got to be more than I could live with, sold it to a derby guy for $475…
The one I’ve been driving for the past ten years….2002 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab, 4.7L 4WD. Rated at 17 highway and it has never wavered from that. Even the ’78 Malibu I drove in high school with a 305 and the notorious THM200 transmission could manage about 20.
The best I’ve had was an ’88 Thunderbird with the base 3.8L V6. Not the fastest thing in the world, but you could set the cruise at 70 and easily get 500 miles out of a tank. Unfortunately like most Essex 3.8s, it was quite the connoisseur of head gaskets.
The 1991 3.8 T-Bird I had when I was 17-19 went through 2 sets of head gaskets and a couple of AOD tranny rebuilds. That car kinda soured me on the Blue Oval for a while, warming back up to it again slowly.
Had the AOD go out on mine as well, but I certainly can’t complain too much since it happened at 218,000 miles.
Easy to see none of you guys are paying $10 per gallon for gas like we do, but back when gas was cheap in OZ in the 80s 14mpg in a Falcon 351 wagon used to hurt but the sound at WOT on the Newel hwy in the early mornings was worth it.
Only decent pic of my ’82 Dodge B250 Royal SE, car in background is literally the only pic I have of my ’82 Dodge Rampage 2.2…if it helps, it’s blue. Anyway, I’m going to say the van, which I can’t remember if it was the 318 or 360 but it never met a gas station it didn’t like-though my ’78 Pontiac Trans Am “Trigger” comes in a close second. The van was a gas guzzler par excellence, but the T/A was arguably more inefficient…the only thing it could haul was four people and ass. So I dunno, tossup.
Honorable mentions to;
1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham – 305
1984 Ford LTD Crown Victoria – Mustang GT 302
and
1978 Ford Thunderbird – 351 Windsor
Probably had a few more….
From about 2003 to 2005, I daily drove a lime green1969 Mercury Colony
Park wagon – 429 2v – my BUSS 429. I got mostly single digit mpg.
Soon after getting it back on the road ( it hibernated at the “Lemon
Grove” in Pa. for about a dozen years), I fired it up one morning and
the muffler blew out while the neighbors tried to sleep. I limped it
quite loudly to a Midas shop and got it a new muffler. Until I was
able to find a wagon-unique gas tank replacement, I had a second fuel
filter down where the sending unit exited the gas tank. About every
100 miles (or dozen gallons of gas, whichever came first) I swapped in
two new fuel filters. One time while swapping the filter at the tank,
I got a face full of gas – both eyes, mouth, nose, but only one ear.
Ahh, the memories.
That would depend on how you want to define the term ‘inefficient’. Based on what that is considered to mean in context, I’m awarding it to two prior vehicles of mine in chronological order of ownership.
1975 Range Rover. This was the original 2-door, power-nothing, hose-out-interior model with the 3.5-litre V8. Had this around 1994 when I was at University, and while I loved it to bits its 12mpg Imperial (around 9mpg US) average fuel consumption meant that it was completely unfeasible to run on a student budget. Regretfully sold it only out of necessity.
1999 Subaru Forester S, bone-stock with the 4-speed auto and naturally-aspirated 2.5-litre engine. It replaced a 2000 Jeep Cherokee Limited with the 4.0 and AW4 automatic; that vehicle, despite having 4.5″ of lift and 31″ tyres as well as having been regeared from 3.55:1 to 4.10:1 could manage 16mpg (US) in town and 21-ish mpg on the highway. The Subaru? 15mpg in town, 22 on the highway. This was with a fresh catalytic converter, oxygen sensors, knock sensor, airflow sensor, etc. It never lived up to its economy promise in comparison to the Jeep, so shares a pedestal with the Range Rover on the basis of unfulfilled promises of economy.
Until very recently that was the compromise you made when buying a Subie. My girlfriend is on her second Forester (an ’05 we picked up two years ago with just 27K miles on the clock). The best I’ve seen either one of them do is around 26 mpg on a long trip shortly after we bought the ’05. Compared to my Dakota it’s downright frugal, but for a 4-cylinder, 165 hp wagon that weighs about the same as a Camry it’s not the greatest.
Of course, all that is forgotten when the snow starts falling or when you learn of all the WRX/STi bits that just bolt right on to a first or second generation Forester.
I think mine would be a 1997-98 Navara pickup that I had for work for a while, double cab V6 5sp 4×2 that would get <10mpg on the highway running on lpg or petrol, it didn't make any difference (it should!). Towing a 1500lb trailer it would top out at about 65mph – it had done 120k mi towing a 3 ton trailer and was getting a bit sad. There was also a Nissan Pathfinder V6 auto 4×4, that got around 12 mpg around town. Happily I didn't have to pay for fuel for either, petrol was around US$6 per gallon at the time.
1972 Pontiac GrandVille
How does a GrandVille 455 beat an early OmniRizon 4-door hatch for mileage? Five of us traveled in 4-door hardtop style to a Colorado ski trip. At 14 MPG, it worked out to about 70 MPG people miles. The accompanying OmniRizon struggled to get 50 MPG with two people and their stuff aboard. The people in the GrandVille also enjoyed AC while in surprisingly warm central NE during March.
I was no stranger to big cars, but the day I took this home the Ping-Pong table size hood intimidated me for a few miles. But, I quickly got used to and had a ball swinging this thing around in all kinds of places it wasn’t supposed to be.
And, gas fell to around 70 cents a gallon in the middle of my ownership around 1989.
Fun college car, in front of my first little house I bought the a year or so after graduation…..
That was a really nice looking car. It even has the rarely-seen wire wheel covers.
1972 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with the 472/4bbl. 5 to 6 mpg in typical driving, and maybe it would squeak out 8 mpg when drafting a tractor-trailer on the highway. You found out really fast why that car had a 27 gallon fuel tank in it. But what a car…. most fun vehicle I owned.
I think you win this one hands down AMonFM.
Congratulations to you and condolences to your wallet.
Perhaps a stout pair of walking shoes as a prize 🙂
Rats, I thought I had this one before I read yours. It takes a Cadillac to beat a Cadillac.
I get a laugh out of telling people of a 500 mile trip on less than a tank in a Falcon GT – 4bbl 351C, FMX, 3.25 9″ running rich at 3500rpm doesn’t rate for fuel economy. But it does have a 42 gallon (US) tank! Actual mileage was about 12.5 mpg.
That would be this car – a newly purchased 72 Maverick LDO with the 302, auto, and A/C, parked in my Dad’s driveway in the midwest, ready to take me to LA in late summer of that year. Got about 12 MPG in LA traffic with A/C. The poor gas mileage combined with a small fuel tank made the LDO a very impractical car to be driving during the 1973-74 oil embargo crisis (anyone remember odd/even days?). Particularly painful at the time given that it had replaced a 69 VW.
You had the long lines at the gas stations, we had “autofreie Sonntage” or “Sonntagsfahrverbot”.
1970 Challenger 383 w/Holley 4 Barrel. I was an Enlisted Sailor and single parent in the late 70’s with very little money, and the 1979 Iranian-induced energy crisis didn’t help my situation when it came time to fill up. But there were no car payments to make, so I kept it and drove every day to daycare, work, and back again.
Hmmm… I had a 1972 Citroen DS20, a 1987 Citroen CX25 GTi, and a 2000 VW Golf VR6 which all got around 25mpg (Imperial) in central London during the 1990s.
But the best example I know is a friend who had an Edsel in Vancouver around 1990. This wasn’t unreasonable when he lived downtown, as the car was only used occasionally. But when he moved to the suburbs, it became increasingly impractical. As he said, “Commuting in an Edsel is one of those ideas which sounds cool but really doesn’t work in reality.” He wound up selling it and leasing a Honda Civic… the total costs for the Honda (lease, fuel, insurance, etc) totalled less than the fuel costs alone for the Edsel.
A 1981 Landrover Lightweight 2.2lt half tonner. So thirsty it had two fuel tanks. My party trick at the local petrol station was, having filled up the first (under the driver seat), to whip round the passenger side and and reveal the other (under the passenger seat). About 18mpg and/or 300 miles on both tanks. Ouch!
Well, if you include Family cars, then we can get a 1972 Ford Galaxie with a 400 – 9-10 mpg if you were lucky.
Personal cars – 2003 Ford Focus SE Zetec w/ a 4 speed auto – 20 mpg regardless of the situation
’07 escalade es
1974 Volga – up to 18 l/100 km, or ~13 MPG, in town at its worst, with original bias-ply tires and some umm… unnecessary use of the accelerator pedal, forgivable for a 18-year-old driver. Justified partly by the fact that it was running happily on 76-octane (!) gas, which was dirt cheap back then (not available today). With a retrofitted Weber carburetor and some other mods, improved to more reasonable ~15-16 MPG city.
have those cars changed since ’76?
I know what I’m looking at, but every time I flick past your comment I see a chromey Volvo 144.
I had a stripper 86 S10 Blazer 4X4 with a 2.8L tbi engine. I’ve always heard these were under powered, mine was & got terrible mpgs. You could smell the fuel in the exhaust, no check engine light or nothing. Tried a couple of O2 sensors with no luck. A senior tech said check the timing, it was in spec. But he never said anything about check to see if it advances when you rev it, which it wasn’t. Driving around with only 10*BTC of timing makes the engine feel weak PLUS the engine doesn’t make enough vacuum for the map sensor to help fuel the engine.
When I figured it out what was going on my quick fix was crank the timing up to 23* (it started hard, Duh!) be ran much, much better. Took a chance on a used ecm & it took care of it. Loose or bad grounds & cool running engines can cause bad mileage.
It depends on how you calculate inefficiency and what you consider daily driving.
When I was running my mobile auto repair business my company vehicle was an Econline that got about 12mpg. Of course it lugged around hundreds of pounds of tools and a smaller vehicle just wouldn’t have cut it.
For a number of years my Scout II was my daily driver to work in the winter time and it too usually averaged about 12mpg. But once I got home I’d most frequently drive something else.
My 75 Buick Limited managed around 10mpg in around town use and while I drove it a lot I didn’t consider it my daily driver but you could say it shared daily driver status just as the Scout above did.
Our Mountaineer was the family truckster for quite some time and it averages around 15mpg in around town use but again it sort of shared daily driver status as it didn’t go out unless all or at least most of the family was along or if I was going to use it to tow something that was near the upper end of its tow rating.
The worst car that I’d consider my true daily driver year round has been my Panthers that returned 20mpg around town back when you could buy pure gas and about 19mpg with today’s E10.
1991 Mercedes 560SEC with 13mpg highway
Nice set of wheels sir ! And not only the wheels.
But so very worth it.
1970 Chevy C10. 307 V8 2 barrel. 3 speed later 4 speed Saginaw stick shift. No PS. No PB. Drums all around. 12 MPG town, Best ever 15 MPG at steady 55 MPH flat ground. Bought in 1976, in 1979 when gas hit dollar a gallon bought 66 VW Fastback as daily driver. Had even number plate on truck, even number plate on VW. I could go a month between waiting in line for gas with a friend driving one of my vehicles. I had electric fuel pump in truck and could fill VW twice from truck. In California they had odd/even days to get gas. Saved a lot of waiting in line for gas, they would not fill gas can larger then 1 gallon. Kept truck until 2006, never a daily driver after 1979 unless other car needed repair. 1979 was round 2 of odd/even days. In 73/74 I used to see people sleeping in their cars waiting in line overnight to get gas before station ran out. I now have 2004 Nissan Titan truck, gets 14MPG around town, 19 MPG HWY. 86 Jetta daily driver.19MPG Hwy. Bought new, has 12,460 miles now.
I had a ’76 Ford LTD Country Squire that was pulling about 9/10 mpg before it gave up the ghost. I don’t remember the size of the gas tank, but it was a mostly an around-town car since I couldn’t go very far.
Oops. Jetta gets 36 MPG hwy, Truck gets 19 on cruise at 62 MPH. Bought Titan new, now has 12,460 miles. Jetta has 295k. Fat fingered other post!
We just returned from a 500 mile round trip from sea level to 7500 feet above, and back. Averaged a trip-computer-displayed 51+ mpg in our 7 year old 90k mile Prius. Compared to that, every other car we’ve owned was an extreme guzzler.
No comments from current truck, large SUV owners. Their costs can’t be low either. For them the image projected makes it all worthwhile.
My F-150 gets around 17 to 18 mpg when empty; 12 mpg when pulling up to 6000 lbs.
The wife’s 1/2 ton van has returned up to 19.5 mpg; around 13 mpg when pulling 8000 lbs.
For many, as Eric Van Buren stated, these may be daily drivers but many are also generating income.
Ditto that, Jason. I absolutely love my ’99 F-250 PowerStroke, but not because of the “image.” The raw pulling power of the 7.3L makes that truck a much more useful tool for my small-scale farm than the old ’69 F-100 or even the ’95 F-150 ever were. Accelerating *uphill* while pulling an 8,500lb skid steer does give one a certain “rush,” though.
It’s the right tool for the right job.
I sense a “History of the 3/4 ton pickup” coming soon…
Do I win?
1980 Chevrolet Silverado crew cab, dual rear wheels, dual fuel tanks, around 6,000 pound empty weight, 8 foot bed, 454, 4 speed muncie first only good for pulling trees over and (really) pulling a stalled tractor with a 65,000 pound load off the street. 5 to 6 miles per gallon, AC on or off, loaded or empty bed no difference.
’94 Land Cruiser 80 series w the 4,2 liter I6. 12 MPG city, 16 hwy. Once managed to get close to 20 mpg out of a tank, from Pocatello to SLC. Fantastic car.
My Poorly Running Caddy 4-6-8 possibly returned 12 mpg’s I never burned a tank so quickly even when nursing it.
’77 Town Car, which I owned around 1990-ish. No matter how I drove it, I got 9.5 MPG. And during the period of my ownership I replaced pretty much the entire ignition system. I tried pegging the cruise control at 55 and accelerating like there was a raw egg under my right foot. No matter what, I could not get the mileage into double figures.
1978 town car with the 460……same experience, my gas gauge never worked…..but you could see the middle move a bit in hard acceleration
1974 Buick LeSabre Luxus convertible with a 350-2. Exactly like the American Excellence model:
Great model, I’ve got the LeSabre coupe and the Riviera from Neo Scale Models, both gold-brown. (These resin models are called American Excellence in the US)
They’ve got a huge range of US cars: http://neoshop.replicars.nl/models.php
1991 Ford Thunderbird 3.8. With it’s ever failing AOD overdrive gear, I drove it often shifted in “D” instead of “(D)”. 17 mpg was the best I could get out of her.
Hands down, my 1970 Cougar XR-7, with the 351 4 bbl. Cleveland V8 engine. On a good day, maybe 9 mpg in LA freeway traffic. Max range on that car was about 125 miles. But man, what a rocket ship, in mini-Mark III drag. Made it all worthwhile.
1959 chev school bus with a viking body and 350 sbc. Used as a truck for a short period. It was a daily driver for a while and I don’t feel real smart about it. Got 10mpg – once. Normally 6-8. There was another though that was my daily driver for possibly 2 years. A one ton 350chevy high cube van. About 8mpg but it was a money maker. Could load up in the morning and do several jobs before I had to return to the shop.
It was only inefficient with respect to mpg. Very efficient when it came to producing income. I would use it again but treat it easier and make it last longer.
In my business the cube vans are actually the most profitable vehicle we have. The Ford 4.6 and 5.4 and four speed auto are archaic, but they are also bulletproof. You can swap an engine out for $3000, peanuts compared to a turbo on a Hino. Fuel is cheap, downtime due to repairs is frightening.
Kind of a toss up for me. My first domestic. A 76 TransAm with the 200HP 455 with mandatory 4-speed. I was a senior in HS so it was my primary mode of transportation to school and work. I never paid to much attention to the MPG. All i remember it that on Monday morning I spent $20 to top off the tank and by Saturday night I was running on fumes. Probably about 100-120 miles worth of driving. Oh and this was back in 1978. One day I got a wild hair and drove cross town and than to the other side of the metro area during rush hour. I was literally watching the gas gauge needle moving while sitting at the red lights.IIRC minium wage was around $2/hour back than so that was 2 good days of flipping Whoppers down the er out the exhaust pipe. I figured it at 6 MPG. My second was a 69 Cadillac ambulance I bought through the local VFD. Long story short is that I bought it to haul my motorcycles to the track. It was all stock with a 472 and 550 lb/ft of torque. There was a long straight section of highway to one of the tracks I frequented. One afternoon I decided to see what the top end was. Speedo went to 120MPH and it took me about 2 to 2.5 miles to bury the needle. I had topped off the tank which only held about 16 gallons for some strange reason. It was on a quarter tank 60 miles later when I got to the track. Under WOT it had to be below 5MPG. You know years ago I used to do open track events with my 86 GN. It could average above 5MPG at 18 pounds of boost around a 2.5 mile course. That’s kind of a weird trade off. Crappy fuel mileage or paying $6.00 a gallon for high octane race fuel.
My ’69 F-100 returned a pretty consistent 10mpg or so, loaded or not. My ’71 Vega (post Buick 3.8L transplant) usually returned about 8mpg, but with an extremely high Hoonery Factor.
That surprises me for a six-cylinder F-100. 240 cid? My dad had a ’70 with a 240 and a three speed and he usually got about 14 or 15 mpg.
It had nearly 300,000 miles on the original engine and was in pretty poor tune… I only put about 2-4,000 miles a year on it, so it didn’t really matter to me that it got such bad mileage.
Oh, yep, it had the 240 and an automatic.
With 300k it gets a huge pass!
8 mpg out of a Vega is a special category of inefficiency. You, sir, have breathed some rarefied air.
Rarified only in that it was full of burning rubber most of the time… (c:
No contest, 1966 Mustang fastback, 4bbl 289 3sp. I had to drive to Battle Creek from Detroit, roughly 110 miles. With a full tank and was very near empty when I arrived.
A triple white 1973 Delta 88 Royale Convertible with a very tired 455 took me through two years of college. It burned quite a bit of oil and got around 10mpg, but did it quietly and with class.
Current pig (almost daily-driven) is a 2wd 1989 3/4 ton Suburban with 454, Turbo 400, and 4.11 axle. MPG is Pii-like but it pulls like a freight train.
First car? Back in 1985, I bought , right out of the Want Ad Press, a stripper, plain Jane ’72 Plymouth Barracuda, Aztec Gold, hubcaps, 318 mated to a 3 speed manual, in great shape. Man, do I wish I still had it, and I would leave stock, no Hemi crate drop ins here! (BTW my Dad owned a green 4 door ’72 LTD !)