So you’re interested in buying a fuel efficient car, but you don’t have $25 grand to throw down on a new Toyota Prius?  You probably also noticed that leasing is dead and great loans can be hard to find.  There’s good news for you.  First, buy a used car and if you’re not sure why, check out my Top 10 Reasons for Buying a Used Car.  Second, you don’t’ have to buy a hybrid to get really good gas mileage.  It’s a myth and it’s propagated by our local, state, and federal governments that do things like give out subsidies for hybrid vehicles or use taxpayer money to help car manufacturers develop hybrid technology.  What’s really important is fuel efficiency – hybrid or not.

To generate this list, Google Trends was used to figure out which high fuel efficiency cars are searched for the most frequently on the web.  Here are the results:

There are a few surprising things about this list:

• 7 out of 10 are foreign made
• Toyota snagged 3 spots on this top 10 list
• Chevrolet nabbed 2 spots on the list (who knew?)
• Chevrolet Volt would be #10, but it’s not in production until 2010
• The Geo Metro and the Geo Tracker came close to making it on this list even though they aren’t in production any longer
• Dodge, Hyundai, Isuzu, Kia, Mazda, Pontiac, Saturn, Scion, Subaru, and Volkswagen should all have something on this list, but none of their cars came even close due to either a low search volume or the complete lack of a high fuel efficiency car

Now that you’ve seen the list, go out and get the high gas mileage car of your choice and make sure you buy one that’s two years old so that you’re getting the best deal, being environmentally friendly, and saving a TON of money using Carsala!

In the used car market, being picky about color is more expensive than air conditioning, an automatic transmission, or leather seats.  Who knew?  Well, now you know and you can save a ton of money by knowing this too.

Since Carsala recently gave me the keys to their amazing price quoting tool, I have been playing around with car prices based on different options.  White and silver are the most popular colors in used cars and each of these colors comprises about 15-20% of any type of car.  This means that if I’m shopping for a used car and decide I only want silver, then for every 100 cars on the market I am only interested in 15 to 20 of them.  That limits my choices and limits the discount I’ll get when I go to buy a car.

Here’s a chart with examples of the premium you will pay if you’re picky about color:

To generate the above chart, I calculated savings off of Blue Book value with a single color compared to not having a color preference.  I looked at cars within 100 miles of where I live because I figured that is about how far an average person would drive for a really good deal on a car.  For savings in dollar value, I assumed that all the used cars cost $20,000 even though many of these cars can be bought for much less than this price – this assured the savings values made sense relative to each other.

If you do choose to buy a car using Carsala, they can quote using a combination of colors.  So if you like any color except red for example, they can quote it this way too.  In these types of cases, color may not impact price or savings, but its’ great to know that if you are being really selective about color, it could cost you well over two thousand dollars.

Leave some comments below about what colors you like/love/hate (and why).  Here’s a chart of the most popular colors for 2008.  Remember that if there are fewer cars on the market of the color you want, then the more you’ll pay if you insist of having that specific color.

Miscellaneous used car facts are rarely of any practical use, but are a lot of fun when you start to ponder the implications of what each factoid means.  Best of all, your friends will be impressed when you know these facts and have already given them some thought!  Consider this for example:

• Automatic transmissions outnumber manual 10 to 1 in the market for used vehicles

If this number was measured 25 years ago, I am sure the number would have been much different – probably leaning towards more manual (stick shift) transmissions than automatic transmissions.  Does this means manual transmissions will soon be one of those, “I remember when…,” things?  Sports cars, and I mean really fast ones, are even starting to use automatic transmission because some automatic transmissions are faster than their manual counterparts.  I think the writing is on the wall for manual transmissions.

Here is a collection of other random and fun facts for you to ponder by yourself or with your friends:

1.       Three out of four automotive transactions in the U.S. involve previously owned vehicles.

2.       The average vehicle will likely have three owners in its lifetime.

3.       Industry experts believe one of every 25 air bags that have been deployed have not been properly replaced. They’re also the most stolen item from a vehicle (having surpassed radios). AOL Autos: Best resale value cars

4.       About half the cars that are flood damaged end up back on the road. As far as Hurricane Katrina is concerned, estimates are that about 200,000 vehicles were dried out and resold.

5.       The most frequently searched price range for a used vehicle is under $5,000.

6.       Consumers lose as much as $4 billion a year due to odometer fraud, with the average rollback being 15,000 miles.

7.       There are more used Silverado pickup trucks for sale than any other model (nearly 120,000 throughout the U.S.)

8.       Texas has more used vehicles than any other state (more than 220,000); Houston alone has more than 32,000 on the market at any given time.

9.       Chevrolet tops the list of most-available brands in the U.S. (with about 450,000 available), followed by Ford (425,000). There are “only” about 280,000 Toyotas on the market at any given time.

10.   Silver is the most available color in the used vehicle market — more than 447,000 vehicles, followed by black (429,000), white (409,000), and red (321,000). Blue (309,000) and gray (277,000) are also aplenty. The color you’re least likely to find? Pink.

11.   Age does appear to matter, at least when it comes to a used vehicle. Nearly half those listed at any one time (about 1.5 million) are model years 2007-2008.

12.   Six cylinder vehicles are the most popular on the used car market, accounting for nearly a third of the total available (and roughly the combined total of both four cylinder and eight cylinder powered vehicles).

13.   The least likely number of engine cylinders? The 23 vehicles that were listed as being equipped with a 16-cylinder motor, among them a 2006 Bentley Continental Flying Spur (just $122,000) and a 1938 Cadillac ($195,000).

14.   Nearly half the used vehicles on the market come with air conditioning.

This list was originally published here (http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/09/19/aa.used.car.fun.facts/index.html).  Share some of your own random and fun used (or new) car auto facts.