A car road trip needs only a few things to be fun: good music, great friends, and a terrific destination. But these days, if you don't want to break the bank, you also need a car with good gas mileage.
For a recent car road trip, my wife and I decided to rent a higher gas mileage car than our 2001 Nissan Altima. After reading NADAguides.com's recent picks for the Best Road Trip Cars, our first choice was a Toyota Prius; unfortunately none were unavailable. Sure an exotic rental would have been fun, but the speeding ticket would have been very expensive.
2008 Dodge Avenger Proves to be Road Friendly
Instead, we rented a 2008 Dodge Avenger SE, which has EPA-estimated gas mileage of 21 mpg city/30 mpg highway. On our 790-mile road trip, I got about 25 mpg. I'll admit it, I drove pretty aggressively. There was a point on a mountain road that my wife clutched the armrest, while yelling at me to slow the [expletive deleted] down. Still 25 mpg is about a 40 percent improvement over the 18 mpg I normally get in my Altima, so that means I saved about $130 in gas, plus I saved wear and tear on my car, which made it well worth the extra time and money at the rental car office.