My car eats corn.

Ok... so I ended up getting a new car. I was really hoping to put off getting rid of the Subaru until I'm done with school... that way I can go carless. But I'm not as hard core as some of my friends. ;)

The Subaru was nice, quiet, and great in the snow. The gas mileage was... well... better than most, but certainly not where it should be. But then again, no cars are as efficient as they could be. It lasted me 160k with no problems. Then the head gasket started leaking oil into the radiator. :(

So... without much research and with absolutely no desire to buy a car... I went car shopping. It would have been nice to look around and get something I really wanted... like a light, small, biodiesel that I could feed Blimpie's or Hardee's. But... it's too cold to ride my motorcycle and my school/work schedule doesn't afford me enough time to bike back and forth between the two. And... I'm still waiting on that train they promised us.

Anyway... it seems that car salesman want to steer you away from anything "alternative." None of the sales people knew anything about any of the cars on their lot with respect to which would run alternative fuels and what type of mileage they got with it.

So... I drove 3 different used cars. The first two really sucked. One had compression problems, I'm guessing it was the catalytic converter. The other had seats that felt like they were eating you. The I drove the Chevy Impala. It was a quiet, smooth, comfortable ride.

I remembered seeing the Impala listed as one of the cars that could run ethanol, depending on the model. I had also looked into fueling stations and had found that there are quiet a few of them in the midwest. (Lack of fueling stations is the reason I didn't get the Civic CNG for $10k new.)

So, I got the car and brought it home and read the manual. Apparently the 3.5L 2006 Impala only runs flex fuel if the 8th number in the VIN is a K.

So, if it's a K then it's OK that it 8 e85. If it's an N it's NOT.

I checked my car and it was a K. So... I found the nearest e85 station and filled up. It was $0.50 less a gallon than gasoline and so far it seems to be getting better mileage than my Subie got on petrol.

Now... time for my hard core bike friends to tell me the bad news!

I know that cars are incredibly inefficient. I know that the US paves the hell out of everything. I know the chemicals used and the mining to get the materials cause damage. I know it takes a lot of energy to build a car. All that aside for the sake of this conversation....

What are the drawbacks to ethanol? I know the positives... they're played up a lot. What are the honest to goodness drawbacks?