[Healeys] Mark This Day -- Gasoline

[Michael Salter]

Since we all seem to have run out of questions about Austin Healeys I have
one not about Austin Healeys which I would like to pose to the gathered
collective wisdom.
Since coming to live in this land of milk and honey I have been constantly
amazed watching the consumer society at work. 
One question which I have never been able to find a realistic answer too is
this: 
Just how much energy does it take to build a car?
In this part of the world it is very unusual to see a car in daily use which
is more than 15 years old and the vast majority of cars on the road appear
to be less than 7 or 8 years old. If we could make cars last longer just how
much energy would we save.
To get the ball rolling I figure that an "average" North American car
probably burns about 6800 US gallons of fuel in its "average" 150K mile
lifetime. But how many equivalent gallons has the manufacturing of that car
consumed before it is driven off the showroom floor? 
Just curious. 

Michael Salter
100 (1953)
AHX12 (1953)
Bugeye (1961)
http://www.netbug.net/blogmichael/