[bdeutsch]

First, let me state that I am a car guy and love the sound of a V8, V10, or V12 at full throttle.

Having said that though, current realities reflect nothing more, nothing less than a supply-demand curve. Price of crude today hit $111USD/barrel. About one-year ago or so, it was down around $60USD/barrel. Math seems pretty straight foreward to me on this.

Was in Europe last week (France and Ireland). Based on some very rough calculations, they are paying between $11.00 to $12.85 per gallon for their gas. You do not see many cars with V8s...

Net-Net of where I am going with this. We are all entitled to have whatever toys we want, that is one of the great things about this country. Unfortunately, these toys in particular, generally consume large quantities of what is getting to be a very expensive (by our standards, not the worlds) consumable. While I do not see crude staying at the $111USD/barrel level, I do not see it anytime soon going back much under $100; so we better get use to paying more.