One of my heartbreaking moments of auto enthusiasm was discovering that not only can I not work the clutch in a Lotus Esprit because my legs are too long, but that the act of getting into and out of an Elise gives me a charley horse. I've loved that damn Esprit since frickin' For Your Eyes Only. So I feel ya. Now that you mention it, my attempts to get into a Fiat 500 were similarly comical. Friend has a Prius V. She loves it. They seem to be great beasties. Priuses, of course, are like belly buttons around here; everybody has one. I wouldn't worry too much about a rate hike. The Fed are a bunch of pussies and in the past week they slinked back from "mmmaybe 12 basis points" to "mmmmaybe early 2016." as far as your numbers... mk - where on the map is "a slightly less esoteric dialect of markup?"The Department of Transportation also reported that the average fuel efficiency of trade-ins was 15.8 mpg (miles per gallon), compared to 24.9 mpg for the new cars purchased to replace them, translating to a 58% fuel efficiency improvement.