Q:
We’re about to retire and want a nice luxury car that will be comfortable and safe for long trips to visit our families, but everything we’ve looked at requires premium gas. Do any higher-end cars use regular? It is not the hugest issue, of course, since we’re looking at expensive cars to start with. Still, we believe we will put about 20,000 miles a year on the car and regular gas would be a substantial savings.
A:
There are some luxury cars that fit the bill. Among them, some Lexus, Lincoln and Cadillac models have taken trouble to announce they have been constructed and tuned to run on regular gas rather than premium gas.
If there’s a particular car you’re interested in and you want to research it before you hit the dealerships, go to Edmunds.com. You can specify the vehicles of interest and, as part of the specifications, you will learn if they require premium or regular gas for top performance.
Minor input:
My disclosure in a recent column that my very first car in high school was an aging Morris Minor provoked many Morris lovers to get in touch and share their reminiscences. I, clearly, am not the only one who found the car to be a personable little runabout that carried with it echoes of landed gentry touring the British countryside.
One reader, a Californian named Mike, recalled that he purchased his 1960 Morris Minor while he was in high school for $350 and it “had its problems and its charm.” His Morris, like mine, had intractable braking issues, and when he would come down the hill from school, he had to run it in second gear and use full brake and parking brake to try to slow it down. “Many times, I had no brakes left at the bottom of the hill, especially when the car was full of kids. We sailed through the stop sign and made a very hard right at the bottom of the hill. Amazing we survived.”
Ah, the memories of first cars!
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