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What I find funny here is the assumption that all 4wd vehicals are gas guzzlers. I own a 2011 Mitsubishi outlander which although not your hardcore off roader aquits itself well in most conditions. It has lots of space and sits high enough not to be bothered by larger vehicals blocking the line of sight to on coming traffic and has enough airbags to have kept the titanic afloat and sits very well on the road. Now I chose the little 2.4L petrol with the 5 speed manual as I wanted some economy and I hate automatics which is the only chose with the V6. The car whilst being no F1 certainly has enough punch to get out of trouble and is fun to drive (the 4WD helps lots here as it has far better traction thus is SAFER). The best bit however is that it returns a little over 9L/100km on the city cycle and 7.2L/100km on the country cycle. In a recent comparison with my folks doing some country driving, their 2.4L 2010 Honda Accord Euro auto could not get better then 9.3L/100km on the open road and they are not leadfoots (72 and 73 years young). The accord is much smaller and lower to the ground then the outlander but the winner is in the weight. The outlander is all ali from the windows up and this reduces the weight of the larger vehical significantly. This coupled with a motor that is tuned for real everyday driving (e.g. mid range torque~ 2000 - 4500 RPM range) vs the Honda with a semi race engine (8000RPM redline) makes all the difference. In short you can have a largish car which delivers reasonable economy, it just needs to be sensible in its design.
Mark
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