To illustrate this point, consider my car. She’s a 1989 Toyota Corolla 4-door sedan affectionately named Lady Harriet (namesake).  She might not look too pretty (though I keep her nice and shiny), but she runs beautifully.

This past week I took her 900 miles across the country and she performed even better than I expected.  My gas mileage was, get this, 40.7 miles per gallon. And that’s not the best she’s ever done.  Her record was set in a rainstorm on a back country highway with stoplights somewhere in Oklahoma: 42.8 miles per gallon.

Perhaps I’m writing this post just because I want to brag about my car.  (Right, so I’m definitely writing this post because I want to brag about my car; it’s kind of like bragging about your kid.)  That aside, in the nearly 20 years from the ’89 Corolla to the ’09 Corolla we seem to have gone backward by five miles per gallon.

Of course there are lots of things that explain this: cars have gotten bigger and heavier, airconditioning and other ammenities hurt gas mileage, etc.  But in a world with gas at nearly $4.00 per gallon, maybe we should start considering what technology can do for us.  The Honda Accord I saw advertised is one of the top cars for fuel economy outside of hybrids and smartcars, and it only gets 40 MPG?

I heard a radio host recently talking about hypermiling.  He made an interesting comment: if people aren’t willing to slow down a bit to save gas or, I would add, buy fuel efficient cars, then maybe gas at $4.00 a gallon isn’t such a bad thing.  Honestly, it’s refreshing to hear someone speaking with such sound economic sense.  If we’re not willing to change our lifestyles to conserve gas money, it means gas prices are still at an acceptable market price.  Of course, there are questions of inelasticity and all that jazz, but the fact remains that as rational creatures we respond to incentives and disincentives.  The price of gas has evidently not yet reached a level to become a disincentive.  When it does we’ll see smaller cars getting significantly better than 40 MPG.  I guarantee it.

I, at least, associate gasoline in the Lego world with Shell.  I also suspect that there are millions of other people who, as kids, took their Shell sponsored Lego race cars to Shell Lego gas stations where they were serviced by Shell Lego gas attendants.  The Shell brand was iconic in the Lego world.  I think that at one point I didn’t even realize there was a real Shell gas company.

Now that I know there is real Shell gas, I retain an irrational affinity for the company.  There’s no reason I should prefer them over any other brand.  Yet if I see a Shell station across from another station (assuming they’re the same price), I’m inclined to go to the Shell station because of my “familiarity” with the brand.  In effect, I’ve been conditioned to go to Shell by playing with Legos.  How many other people like me are out there?

I’d be interested to know what the exact terms of the agreement were. Presumably Shell paid a large sum of money for the advertising opportunity.  It’s my guess that the investment was well made.  I think somebody should do a study on the success of Shell’s advertising through Legos.