In the past few decades, flight prices have come way down making the family road trip obsolete. This is sad, because 1) I don’t get to annoy my brother and family anymore with music or on day 7 get to the point of complete loopyness. And 2) because it’s another shovel of dirt on the car as a viable means of transportation. However, while researching flights over the weekend I have come to the conclusion that flying is no longer the most cost effective way of travelling across the country. What this means is, everyone start packing, Its “Independence Week” and WE’RE GOING ON A ROAD TRIP!
Yes, flights have been steadily increasing in price over the last few years to the point where generally cheaper to travel by car. Even with gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, it’s still cheaper to take your car than to take a flight. Take for instance this summer. I am going to a bachelor party in Toronto. I live in Chicago and the cost of a plane ticket is roughly around $400. Being a full-time cubicle minion and part-time auto journalist, I don’t make enough to actually buy that ticket. And being that this is my brother in-law who I actually get along with, not going really isn’t an option.
What is an option is taking my FR-S on its first big road trip.
Now many of you may say that the FR-S is not the ideal road trip car, and you’re wrong. It’s a 2+2 with enough room for me and my stuff. Even if it wasn’t, I could really care less. It will be a blast, running up to Canada with my car, tunes blasting and me belting down the
highway! It will be the first road trip I’ve done in almost a decade and will cost me considerably less money than the plane ticket. Total price of the run up and back will come out to be $160 or around a third of the cost of a plane ticket. That’s 8hrs, or 520miles, of me just having fun in my car. Personally, I also don’t like flying. Not because I think the plane is going to fall out of the sky. I don’t wear a tinfoil hat…all the time. But rather I just like the control I have over my car. I can stop, check out the sights, or run some twisty back roads and have way more fun in the car than being stuck in the airport and on the plane.
What this trip will also be is a test run for my wife and I’s road trip to Austin later this year for the Formula 1 race. Last year we took a plane and we met some very interesting people. One was a car collector that owned a few Group B cars, the other was Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean!
But we also got stuck with a terrible Kia Soul rental car that had sticky brakes, and felt like it was always going to flip over. It also made it hard to compete in the parking lots when I was surrounded by every kind of awesome car out there! Literally, Ferrari’s, Bentley’s, McLaren’s, and a SEAT!
This weekend is the 4th of July, which used to mean you traveled solely by road trip, and with today’s ever increasing cost of a plane ticket, maybe that will come back around. Yes, gas prices are high, but the cost of an airplane ticket is higher. Plus when you take a road trip you bond with your family, and more importantly with your car. Road trips are great ways to see the rest of the country, meet new people, find weird exhibits like the world’s largest olive…which is nothing more than a concrete olive statue.
(Why anyone cares, I have no idea)
So on this 4th of July weekend, exercise your independence! Go out, travel, find a back road, get silly, annoy your parents, and annoy your kids! Just fill up the car, pack a cooler and go somewhere! It’s cheaper than flying and has better food. So go out and drive people!
