My '99 Ford Ranger gets surprisingly decent gas mileage, and I drive it pretty regularly, too. Unfortunately, with the surging price of gas, even decent gas mileage won't help when you're getting gouged at the pump. That goes especially here in L.A., where the price for the cheap stuff is already at over FOUR bucks a gallon. That means that I'll get approximately ten gallons for forty bucks.

Contrast that with just four years ago, when gas cost about HALF that much.

I wanna get a Mini Cooper S, though. While the lack-of-leg room will likely kill me (I'm abnormally-tall, you know), the small car and the twenty-plus miles per gallon I'd likely be able to squeeze out of it would help with fuel costs.