Do you notice anything interesting about this Budget Rent-a-Car page? (Click the image to see a larger version)

For quite a few years now, we frequent travelers have heard the agent offer, “would you like a free upgrade to an SUV?” as if this was a gift! Today, while booking a rental car, I noticed that the cheapest vehicle offered by Budget is an “Intermediate SUV!” A “standard SUV” (aka land yacht) is less than $1 more than a compact car! These gas-guzzling, air-polluting behemoths are cheaper to rent than an intermediate sized car.

I hope this means that they are having trouble renting these SUVs. Perhaps they will cut back their purchases of these vehicles from the manufacturers, leading to less production of them.

I can only hope that gas prices climb another dollar or two. This should get more people (and policy makers) to wake up and demand more fuel efficient cars.

As many of you may know, a couple years ago, I named this blog Vegcar because the domain was available. I had heard the term used a couple of times but it wasn’t (and still isn’t) part of the lexicon.
Today, I became acquainted with a blog called Vegtruck that started up at the end of May 2007. Clearly a cousin of this blog, it has some good information and stories. Kudos to its author Clayton (pictured in photo)!

CBS did a story on Sunday on a vegcar converter in North Carolina that got a visit from the IRS to try to collect the federal road tax from him. They say in the story that North Carolina (and three other states) passed laws exempting vegcar drivers from paying the road tax. If the road tax is a federal tax, how can states exempt anyone from paying it? Any thoughts or information?