Always sets them on back foot as they will give better deals if they think they will be gouging you on finance.

I paya premium to have servicing close by – easiest to drop in a say – fix this – rather than ring up and book in. No point saving $400 if you have to drive across town in traffic to get stuff worked out.

My newest car is a nice black 110,00k Mitsubishi Verada 2001 with the lot, leather, towbar etc. for $8,000. Suits me.

Ms Fx is sticking with her old Volvo. Local ofspring with his 96 Commodore Acclaim.

We don’t buy new cars.

I’ve yet to see any evidence that there’s been any public campaign urging people to cut their car use on the scale of the water-saving campaign here in Brisbane.

Every night, dam levels were reported on the news. Every time you walked through the Queen Street mall there were massive billboards urging people to cut their usage with scary graphics of how low the dams were.

We’re STILL getting major news coverage each month when the usage figures come out or the dam levels are updated.

When we get daily reports on fuel sales and the government offering subsidies for engine tune-ups and bicycle purchases we might see movement on fuel use.

Let’s face it, assume there was a war tomorrow and Australia’s petrol imports were severely disrupted, does anyone doubt we could cut fuel use drastically?

Realistically however, governments (especially the ALP) are going to try to keep it alive no matter what.

I share your concerns on both climate change and peak oil and sadly I must agree with your views on our greatly reducing demand from prices alone. When you consider what people really pay for motoring with the combination of registration, insurance, depreciation and in capitals $15+/day for parking, travel demand being inelastic shouldn’t come as a shock.

The really effective policies to reduce urban commuting are usually things like capping parking supply in CBDs and increasing public transport. There is no one policy that will get us close to reduction targets on transport.