Ha! I do remember stopping for gas in the early morning hours somewhere in northern Louisiana or Mississippi? We could still get am station WLS outta Chicago on the radio (that was really cool!). Then we stopped again in Florida somewhere north of Tampa, so I likely went through somewhere between 2 or 3 tanks of gas (20 gal tank). I know my car only did somewhere around 8 - 10 mpg tooling around town (LOL), but on the highway I bet I got at least 16mpg, more like 18 maybe?....for 60 gallons (3 tanks) that would be about 1,080 miles (60 x 18). I believe it was right at around 1,100 miles from Danville, IL to Sarasota, FL, so that makes sense. I possibly could have even gotten close to 20 mpg cruising along "gantly"!I wonder what the cruising range of a full tank was ? Maybe 150 miles ?![]()
So, cruising range could have been somewhere between 320 & 400 miles per tank! As opposed to driving around town on the "strip" of 160 to 200 miles per tank!...not a bad guess! I "did" get better gas mileage with those huge Mickey Thompson Super Scavenger Headers though!....very little back pressure with those! I always ran the factory original stock GM exhaust and mufflers though.
Fun stuff to remember...that car was just Soooooo Cool! I really miss it! Btw, I had a high school buddy with me on that trip down (Spring Break '68)....had two more friends with us on the return trip from Daytona Beach. I found out many years later that the guys took turns driving my car while I slept in the back seat. I drove all the way down and from Sarasota to Daytona because my buddy couldn't drive stick.....I just lost him this past year to cancer (he was in the Marines during Vietnam and later headed up the GM Saturn plant in Tennessee! (RIP Rodney!).