And now a disclosure.

On Sunday, I wrote a story about truck and SUV sales tanking. (See:) The story quoted a number of dealers, truck owners and even an urban planner about the slowdown in big-car sales now that gasoline has risen above $4.00.

The story included an anecdote about a Salt Lake resident who could only get $8,000in trade-in value on a 2004 Dodge Ram truck that she bought for $30,000 and still owed $18,000 on her car loan.

If there was a theme to the story, it would have been: “Who in their right mind would buy a truck or SUV when gas prices are so high?

I did. Two weeks ago, I bought a used Honda Passport from a local car dealership. I didn’t intend to buy a car, let alone an SUV. If fact, I just went to the dealership to see what kind of prices they were offering.

Plus, my 1990 Mazda (One of my friends used to kid me that “Miata” means “piece of #@&!” in Italian) had major transmission problems that would cost more to fix than the car was worth.

Call me a contrarian but since I live about a mile away from my work and drive an average of about 4 miles a day, I’m not going to feel the car’s 16 to 18 miles per gallon fuel mileage the same way a Mililani commuter would. Plus I’ve also decided to walk to work at least once a week to save on gas.

If prices for large trucks or SUVs are being discounted, buying one might make sense for someone in similar situation. I just hope I don’t regret the purchase when the price of gasoline rises above $5 a gallon.

Tags: SUVS, Trucks

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Biz Bites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.