i have a very difficult decision to make this summer, one I’ve been hiding from for a long time now.

This summer, the year of my graduation, may be the summer I have to say goodbye to my beloved 2004 Infiniti G35 sedan, which I lovingly named “Manuel.” Those of you who know me know how much I love this car, and those of you who don’t should A) get to know me. We’ll grab a drink sometime, and B) believe me when I tell you I love this car.

Manuel currently sits around 75,000 miles with a busted driver’s seat and an electronic starter that sometimes fails to start. I call these aspects of Manuel “character,” like your friend’s birthmark or stutter, but my parents call them reasons to get a new car. For the first time in my life, I think they might be right.

I know many of you students don’t have a car on campus, but there’s no way you haven’t heard by now: Gas is expensive. Those three words ought to be enough justification for getting a new car, but I’m an incredibly analytic person, and I fought them off for months until I sat down and did the math yesterday. I see no way around it. It’s time to get a new car.

As of March 28, crude oil was sitting at $124 a barrel and my gas station on Green Bay and Emerson was charging about $4.58 for a gallon of gasoline. Manuel gets about 19 miles to the gallon in the city, with a 20 gallon tank, yielding a fill charge of $91.60 and 380 miles to empty. Painful, right?

My dad, knowing I would never get a new car that wasn’t a hybrid, has been pushing a 2012 Toyota Camry the last few times we’ve talked. The car gets about 41.5 miles to the gallon in city driving, and with a 17-gallon tank, it would cost $77.86 to fill and yield 705.5 miles to empty.

This is all assuming optimal driving conditions, which Chicago’s notoriously cracked and broken wintry roads don’t provide, but the fact remains: the new car is almost twice as fuel efficient as Manuel, from both a mileage and cost standpoint. I’d be getting gas about half as often, “saving” me $105 per month and $1260 per year, assuming gas prices stay the same. In reality, they’ll continue going up, at least for the summer, “saving” me even more money.

Given Manuel’s trade-in value and the cost of a new Camry, I could pay off the difference in price on gas savings alone in a little more than 14 years. This, too, fails to account for my skyrocketing upward mobility as a Creative Writing and Linguistics major over the next 14 years (it’s a JOKE, people).The prospect of “paying off” the Camry with gas savings over 14 years is a terrifying one when 14 years represents a full two thirds of my entire lifetime, but anxiety aside, the math makes sense. Full disclosure: I’ve never taken an econ class and have probably failed to account for inflation, global trade, all that good stuff, but in my head, where it counts, it all checks out.

If I’m being honest with you, I felt a bit anxious and sick to my stomach when I was doing all of the calculations. I could see where they were leading. Never before had it been lain out so bare, stripped naked and displayed out in front of me: It makes no fiscal sense to keep Manuel much longer.

I know what I have to do, but dammit, I don’t want to have to do it. I want to cruise around the corn fields of sunny Pennsylvania as a 16-year-old again, blaring “Dani California” with the top down, when gas was $2.60 and we were young and restless and only cared about going fast and far.

This decision had made me feel more grown up than post-graduation apartment searching or ordering my cap and gown has. Rest in peace, Manuel. I only hope I age as gracefully as you have. Now taking suggestions on new car names.

Dan Camponovo is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]