The top gas guzzlers of 2007

A vehicle like Cadillac's Escalade SUV, which is tied for seventh place, has everything you could want in an inefficient car: huge size, a hefty curb weight, a huge engine — and lots of sex appeal.

General Motors recognizes that economy is not the purpose of a car like the Escalade, but spokeswoman Sherrie Childers Arb points out that the company also offers "24 models that the EPA rates at 30 mpg or better on the highway."

Toyota Motor defended the inclusion of the Toyota Land Cruiser SUV. In an e-mail message, company spokesman John Hanson said, "There are many vehicles with the same annual fuel cost in this list. So this list is not just 10 different models. It is approximately 80 models, made up of mostly large SUVs, large pickups, passenger vans and high-performance luxury/exotic cars. By their nature, heavy and powerful vehicles will get relatively lower fuel economy."

Audi took issue with our practice of naming an entire model range if one of the range's vehicles had poor fuel economy. For example, Audi's A8 sedan is on our list, but due to space constraints we did not specify which engine/transmission combination earns the model bad marks for gas mileage. We provided a link to that information in each slide.

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But David Greene, corporate fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says that engine/transmission combinations are not the only things that affect fuel economy. (Greene is the person in charge of operating the department's fuel-economy information program.)

"There are a number of things," Greene said. "The EPA has a fairly elaborate set of rules. It's not only the body style, the engine and the transmission. Those are the most important three factors, but there are other factors."

Of the two Land Rovers on our list, spokeswoman Deborah Sandford says that "Land Rover vehicles are designed to have a breadth of capability that meets our owners' use both on- and off-road. We are continuously working to improve our fuel economy without compromising our brand attributes."

As for the long, heavy Rolls-Royce Phantom sedan, which is also on our list, Rolls spokesman Bob Austin wrote, "While it is a fact that in a spectrum of all new cars the Phantom is at the high end in fuel consumption, it is relatively fuel-efficient for its size. It gets 13 mpg city and 19 mpg highway — much better than most sport utility vehicles that are similar in size."

One of Rolls' main competitors, Bentley, thinks annual fueling cost figures "are irrelevant as they relate to Bentley owners," according to company spokesman David Reuter. He also said that fueling cost data are "computed based on 15,000 average miles driven per year. That figure is substantially higher than what a typical Bentley owner would drive his or her car. A typical Bentley owner would drive his or her vehicle less than 7,000 to 8,000 miles per year. Mostly, this is because Continental owners have a fleet of four or five other vehicles, while an Arnage/Azure owner has as many as seven or eight."

He added, "Bentley Motors is committed to producing more fuel-efficient cars in the future, and we are currently developing new technologies to help us achieve this. We are in the early planning phase of a long-term strategy to examine all options, including hybrids and diesel engines, and we are not ruling anything out at this stage."

Tony Fouladpour, a spokesman for high-end automaker Porsche, discussed the inclusion of the company's Cayenne SUV on our list. "All the new Cayennes now use the direct-injection technology that is 15 percent more efficient while offering a corresponding increase in power — the type of engine performance expected in Porsches," he wrote. "While this doesn't translate to lower costs in fueling, it does serve to maintain the cost with significant improvements in performance."

Ford Motor declined to comment for this story. By publication time, the other manufacturers mentioned in this story had not responded to requests for comment.

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