Fuel's gold

Last week I did something I'd never done before, indeed something I never thought I would. Sure, I'm now of advancing years and yes, if you live long enough the chances are that the day will come that even the most implausible predictions of the future - personal jetpacks, meals in pill form, robotic companions, Souths to win another game this year - may be realised. Last week, another vision of the future came true which only five years ago would have seemed as likely as that epileptic slaphead greenie from the Oils becoming Federal Minister for the Environment.

Last week, for the first time in the history of the universe, I paid more than $2 a litre for petrol.

The price of 91-octane unleaded hit 200.9 New Zealand cents per litre on the afternoon of Thursday, May 22nd. To be fair, if you were on a BP forecourt, it happened the day before, because BP New Zealand are cunts like that; if anyone's putting their prices up first, it's them. I should point out that fuel prices in NZ are broadly set by the distributor rather than the individual franchisee who runs or owns the petrol station, and prices are pretty much the same nationwide, apart from out in the stickiest of the sticky sticks like out on the West Coast and other places in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere that you didn't really want to go anyway. So rather than traipsing around the city trying to find the cheapest fuel (usually wasting more than you save in the process), you know to refuel as soon as BP starts tacking three or four cents onto their advertised prices. In fact it usually makes the nightly news when it happens (yes, TV news here is that yokel - sometimes it's so yokel I start getting flashbacks to Prime Local News and half expect Prime Possum to turn up. Prime Possum, sitting in a tree... Prime Possum, just molested me... Prime Possum loves every boy and girl, so... Ahem.) Anyway it's hard to miss.

So as of 6pm on Thursday every petrol station in Dunedin was charging 200.9 cpl. Other than the independents down the street from my house who were still charging 196.9 because they hadn't figured out a way to make their dodgy old sign read a '2' in front yet. And they were shut anyway. Despite this, there was seemingly no sign of England-style panic buying of fuel, a practice so astonishingly fucktardian that no words of mine can approach a description - best left to the great Sniff Petrol to do justice where justice must be seen to be done. As for me, I wasn't on a BP forecourt, because they, as observed, are cunts. I was on a Caltex forecourt, because they're obliging (read slutty) enough to accept supermarket fuel discount vouchers from anyone who waves them under their nose. Which is where you go 'Hang on, if he's paying with a discount voucher he's paying less than two bucks a litre'. Or you go 'Fuck me this is tedious, he's lost the plot, I wonder whether they still have porn on the internet, better check.' Well, no. Even with the 4c/L off I was still paying 201.9 because I was in the Astra which predominantly gets treated to 95-octane premium, being a clever little Euro car with an ECU which can figure out when it's running on higher quality fuel and advance the ignition timing etc to suit, such that you end up with fuel economy gains which usually outpoint the extra five cents a litre you have to shell for. A top fuel efficiency tip: it's worth finding this out (i.e. whether your car will turn out better economy and/or performance on the better juice) as the more expensive fuel gets, the smaller the jump to premium becomes, as a percentage of the overall spend. (Actually our toppest fuel efficiency tip is: stop driving like a fucking arsehole. This is why Toyota Camrys get such good fuel economy. They're no more economical than any other medium car but they're driven exclusively by bowls ladies and others on the precipitous verge of death and as such are no great friend of the OPEC cartel.)

Like in most countries, there's been the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth ref. fuel hitting the latest in a series of psychological tipping points - do you start leaving the car at home at $2 a litre? $2.50? - but at least it gives NZ something to giggle about when the Strayans are internally haemorrhaging over $1.50/L petroleum extract, and (Apparently He's A) Doctor Brendan Nelson is straightfacedly proposing binning an infinitesimal fraction of the federal fuel excise in order to keep petrol affordable for at least another 15 minutes before OPEC cranks the handle again, or until he gets the arse as Leader of the Leftovers, whichever comes first.

The most interesting thing about this is the bipolar effect that exponential fuel prices are having on the Australian and NZ new vehicle market. As one might expect, sales of large family sedans - Commodores, Falcons et al - are down, and sales of Corolla-class hatchbacks are up. Indeed Commodore's 15 year market leadership is beginning to come under threat from the Corolla, basically a piece of whitegoods with a steering wheel, which indeed proves that the majority of the vehicle buying public are as discerning and intelligent as the fucktards who watch Big Brother (and may indeed be the same people.) Actually that's slightly left of the truth because the real figures on car sales get obscured by the manufacturers - the overall figures include sales to governments and fleets, which obviously don't necessarily indicate whether a particular model is desperately desired by the people who purchase or drive said vehicle, other than it being cheap enough to keep the departmental beancounters happy that week. The best-selling car in Australian on the basis of private sales only - i.e. members of the public putting their own hard-earned onto the dealer's table - is, in fact, the Mazda 3. Not that Mazda are allowed to advertise it.

Anyway, the interesting thing (I promise it's at least a bit interesting) is not the predictable response from dullards and personality-bypass recipients to dive headlong into an ugly beige econobox with a Toyota badge where the Westinghouse sticker should be. It's the response of more than one in five customers who buy a Commodore or luxury derivative thereof, who tick the box marked 'Massive great fuel-sucking carbon-plume-emitting six litre V8' on the engine options list. Holden have never sold as many V8s in their entire sixty-year history as they are doing right now. The sales proportions for V8 Falcons are similarly as warped. Depending on your viewpoint it's either a supremely selfish act of heinous environmental and social vandalism... or a fucking good idea to get in now before the getting stops being anywhere near as gettable. Aforesaid viewpoint depending how punishing you are and whether anyone talks to you at parties, of course.

This, regardless of what ludicrous heights petrol prices hit, proves that performance and quality of driving experience won't necessarily be casualties of OPEC's profiteering at the expense of the petrol motor car. Because people won't sacrifice these things - or at least 20% of Commodore and Falcon buyers won't anyway - and probably won't have to. Turbodiesels and petrol-electric hybrids might have the reputation they do from dull shitboxes like the Toyota Prius, but the fastest car Toyota's luxury brand Lexus makes is the hybrid GS350h, which goes like several shades of shit off a shovel and uses less fuel than a Camry. And as for diesels, other than the M5, the fastest 5-series in BMW's range is their top-end turbodiesel - again with minimal carbon footprint, again with hatchback-scaring economy, and again with the poo-off-garden-implement performance reputation. Holden will have turbodiesel and/or hybrid Commodores available inside two years, Ford probably not far behind. And to be honest, the fuel economy figures which the existing Falcodores are capable of are quite astonishing for the size of the car (as are the performance figures - 15 years ago a 0-100 km/h time of seven seconds was minor-league-supercar territory, now you can do the same thing in a base model Falcon).

So the spike in fuel prices won't kill off performance cars, and in all likelihood probably won't kill off the big, breezy Strayan family car either, despite the Hanrahan-esque doom-harbingering of various motoring 'analysts'. During the fuel shortages and price spikes of the '70s and '80s similar downturns in large car sales were seen, but the market recovered (despite the same dorks blathering on), and for one good reason: Falcodores make a fucking lot of sense for Australia, where outside the Relatively Large Smoke, what meagre outposts of civilisation prevail are usually separated by a hundred or more kays of straight single carriageway with lots of B-doubles to navigate around in the interim. Drive Sydney-Brisbane, or any subset of the Pacific Highway therein, in a current Falcon or Commodore (or 380, or Aurion, or whichever family six or eight the Avis people have around the shop), then drive back in one of those beige econoboxes. And be sure to tell me which fucks you off the most and/or earliest - the leg cramps and lower back spasms from being contorted into a seat designed for bonsai Japanese housewives, or the face-melting frustration at not being able to pass anything other than road-food flatulence when challenged with anything more than a minor incline.

Still, when you live on a hill in the Antarctic (or on the Riviera of the Antarctic), a four-wheel-drive Subaru makes a lot of sense too. Even if around town it uses almost as much fuel as one of those massive great fuel-sucking carbon-plume-emitting six litre V8 Commodores. (And who needs 4wd when you can just melt the morning frost with judicious use of the loud pedal?)

The Doctor is OUT (to refuel the Impreza, again.)