As of last Friday, August 8th, fuel prices at the pump had dropped for the 22nd consecutive day. They have continued to drop but on that day, I decided to ask my busy father of 5 friend, Robert Gonzalez, from Twitter a few questions about how the price drop is affecting his family this summer.

Robert and his wife have 5 kids ranging from 3 to 12 (aww! I always wanted my own basketball team!) and they are homeschooling them all. They have a Chevy Surburban for family trips and a Pontiac Vibe for Robert to go to his job. Now granted, they don’t have to shuttle 5 kids to school which saves their fuel consumption but the kids do have to do activities outside the home as part of their homeschooling compliance, eg, physical education, music lessons, etc. And, family outings cannot be done in the more fuel efficient Vibe so the Suburban gets used a lot.

Now Robert is one of those incredibly smart and quirky fellows so when his wife decided that the old family minivan wasn’t sexy enough to suit their family’s lifestyle image in 2006, Robert started keeping all of his gas receipts for the then new Suburban. Brace yourself! When Robert y familia bought the ‘burban, gas was $2.45 a gallon and it cost a mere $55 to fill up the tank. Flash forward to now and his tank last week was $4.11 and over $130 to fill up the tank.

So you might be saying to yourself “Yeh, so we are all adapting” but for the first half of this summer, what that meant for the Gonzalezes who can go through an 18 pack of eggs at breakfast time, everything gets affected and impacted. Now instead of days when they could do a nice outing all together, they have turned to attending free events in the parks. Robert and I both noticed that these kind of events are now overcrowded because gas prices are affecting everyone and that now, there is an increase in people just going to the malls, superstores and electronics stores just for entertainment, air conditioning and time outside the house. A recent and rare trip to Fry’s Electronics that I just made showed me just that: people lining up to play the Wii’s, XBox 360, watch the flat screen TV and no one in line actually making purchases.

Not a conspiracy theorist at all, Robert also noted that the increase in food costs that are supposedly the result of increased gas prices are, in his opinion, are the fuel companies giving commerce a reason to raise prices that people cannot question.

A veteran of both GM and Toyota, Robert also pointed out that the cars being made today are the cars that would have been okay 4 years ago. His family is sticking with its Suburban because it is functional, supports their lifestyle and with fuel costs dropping, he is hoping that they will be able to resume normal activities that they enjoy doing together. As for his Vibe, he said that if a new car doesn’t get at least 32 mpg, he wouldn’t even consider replacing it.

It seems that the idea that the recent fuel crunch would cause people to change their buying and driving habits isn’t as big as what was previously predicted. Although 50% of the cars sold in the US in June 2008 were 4-cylinders, the drive to keep filling the American dream for the sexy car that suits is continuing.

Michelle Naranjo

Originally posted here