Rich,
For the most part I agree with you; however, from the perspective of someone who has spent most of his lifetime earning an income from behind the wheel, and the latter part paying for the fuel to do it, economy
has to be a factor for me when considering a work vehicle.
If I simply drove to and from work, parked the car and either took someone elses car (ie a patrol car or company car) or sat in an office all day, then I'd not care what kind of mileage the car got going to and from

:dancer01:
But if I have to feed it, and I drive on average, 150-200 miles/day, I have to toss the cost of fuel into the equation.
When I bought my Scion, I was driving both the Vette and the LandCruiser for work.
The vette, other than it's simple impracticality in my business, wasn't bad on fuel. Not the best, but certainly not bad. somewhere in the vivinity of 17 around town, which is where I spend most of my time.
The LandCruiser got a whopping 9.5 MPG on a good day
It was taking $80-90.00 to fill up the tank, and I was ding that almost daily!:thumbsdown:
Do the math and you can see the problems from an economics standpoint.
The thought of 50+mpg for a work car is very :dancer01:
I don't care what it looks like, or particularly how it performs (although for a 4 cyl. the Scion XD kicks ass!), as long as I don't spend the majority of my income feeding it.
At the end of the day, I park it and go about my way.
I'm thinking about either a complete custom rebuild of the LC with a Vortec powerplant, or selling and finding a BMF 4x4 truck to pull the airboats.
Crappy mileage but who cares? It's a fun fun truck that will be used to support a good cause. Either the fooundation will support it or it won't get used much. Either way, it's not a daily driver, so it won't matter.
For a road trip...gimme a sports car (Vette, Viper, or????)