Fuel costs make sports cars even more of a luxury

Expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better -- especially where gas mileage is concerned.

Luxury sports cars -- some of them costing hundreds of thousands of dollars or more -- dominated the bottom rungs of the federal government’s most recent fuel economy ratings.

Coming in dead last among 2008 models was the Lamborghini Murcielago with automatic transmission, which gets eight miles to the gallon in the city, 13 on the highway. The numbers for the manual transmission model were only slightly better: 9 mpg and 14 mpg.

These cars have a base sticker price in the $300,000 range, give or take a few thousand, according to Edmunds.com.

The Bentley Azure, another $300,000-plus vehicle, isn’t exactly a fuel sipper either, getting 9 mpg city and 15 highway. The Bugatti Veyron, which lists for more than $1 million, gets 8 city and 14 highway.

At the other end of the scale, the Toyota Prius (base sticker: $20,950) came in first with 48 city, 45 highway.

Of the top 10 cars with the best fuel economy, the only nonhybrids were the Toyota’s Yaris and Corolla and the Honda Fit. All have base stickers under $15,000.

This year’s ratings are based on the government’s new fuel economy tests, which were designed to better reflect real world driving conditions. They resulted in lower mpg ratings for many models, particularly hybrids.