my dakota is only my third vehicle. i hardly drive it other than to my hunting camp and towing stuff around. my 1995 saturn that gets 32-33 city and 40-42 hwy is my daily driver and my 2010 Mitsubishi endeavor is the other .

 

I didn't say you were, I'm just saying that they have already created a fix for bad fuel economy while towing, and that is a diesel rig.

 

Lol, I just had a '94 Camry LE 2.2L four banger. I hated the severely underpowered engine and horrible shift points. It got me about 25mpg with about 50/50 city/highway driving. That was my downgrade form my V8 AWD Explorer that I had and even that was underpowered, but way better than a four cylinder. Now I have me a Durango 4.7L and a few modifications and I can pull about a 11mpg average with my heavy foot syndrome.

 

only way to have a 4 banger that is under powered is with a manual trans. those auto camarys were dogs..

 

Anything with a torque converter is usually a dog.


EDIT: 666 post.

 

I used to have a '99 SL2 with the twin cam engine...I took off the air silencer, put in a drop-in K&N filter, and got about 35 mpg highway. I sold it for $950 and it's still going strong, has about 150k miles on it now. Burns almost as much oil as gas, but apparently Saturns had that problem.

I even towed my boat with it, granted the boat/ motor/ trailer combo only weighed about 2000 lbs but that little Saturn would still do it as long as I left the O/D off. I liked that little car, it served me well for a few years. Good car.

 

the saturns have a poor designed oil relief on the pistons which cause the rings to get caked with burned oil which causes the burning of oil on them. easy fix if you are inside the engine anyways. drill 4 1/8 holes in the oil ring landing equally spaced and not right above the wrist pins in to the piston and you are good to go. mine burns no oil. 177777 miles right now.

 

Anything with less than six cylinders is usually a dog, even with today's technology. Unless its blown, but those don't count.

My sister has a 2009 Acura RDX AWD Turbo'd 2.4 cranking out 240HP. Wow. That's all I can say. It has an obvious turbo lag but once that shyt spools up OMG its a rocket. Which brings me to my next point..... Why can't all sports cars (besides muscle cars) just flat out use AWD? Lamborghini does and their cars can pull a 0-60 in no time flat.

 

AWD is heavy and costs more $$$

 

But you get power to all wheels = better acceleration/handling. Manufacturers could choose to use more aluminum instead of steel. That would fix the weight gain.