The Minivan That Could

Today I'm thrilled to feature another guest post from a friend of mine! Meredith Rawls and I met years ago in San Diego while both getting our masters in astronomy. I remember she drove this great old van around, and swore up and down it was the most reliable car she'd ever known. When she told me recently they had been keeping data on every tank of gas purchased since '96, I was thrilled! Take it away, Meredith!

Way back in 1996, my parents decided to buy a minivan. I was in middle school, so I don’t remember much about the decision-making process, but it had something to do with taking more family camping vacations and wanting a new vehicle that was versatile and reliable. Apparently they did their research, because today I am still the happy driver of a 1996 Toyota Previa with 200,000 miles and counting.

Meredith and her husband with their Toyota Previa at White Sands.
Photo by David Morrison

Visualizing the Evolution of Cars

From user 27147 on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed, some rights reserved.

I've always been a big fan of cars. Like with sports, cars are a subject for which people love to quantify things. Horsepower, curb weight, engine displacement, top speed, miles per gallon... all of these attributes are carefully measured, graded, evaluated, and play a factor in the car market. In high school I knew every stat for my '87 D50...

When I looked at cars over the last couple decades, the change in one particular attribute stood out to me: cars are getting big! (both heavier and larger) I'm not the only one noticing this, of course, and cars used to be very large. So I asked myself: How have car sizes, and efficiencies, changed with time?

I started by looking at data for one of my all time favorite brands: BMW