Escondido Auto Park sales are down , and everyone has become an expert on how to fix the problem.

City officials, who are concerned about reduced sales tax revenue as a result of the slump in auto sales, have proposed erecting roadside signs near the Westfield North County mall to direct drivers to the auto park. They are also considering replacing other signs with more visually prominent versions. Personally, I believe these proposals would add more clutter to our roads but accomplish little else.

Having attended the San Diego Auto Show in the convention center downtown earlier this year, I have some other suggestions. We enjoyed having free rein to climb in and out of the new 2008 vehicles without overly zealous salesmen pressuring us into making one of the most important financial decisions of our lives in a few short minutes.

Consumers sell themselves on new cars, and they should not be denied this opportunity. So my first recommendation is for auto dealers to allow consumers time to "shop the lot" with little or no pressure, as was the case at the auto show.

The most obvious reason local residents are not purchasing new vehicles is the plunging housing market. Reduced home equities, according to the Jan. 13 NCT article, "Spending slump haunts frail economy," are biting deeper into North County consumers' pocketbooks and impacting their ability to purchase new cars and trucks . Since I have considerable equity in my home, this did not contribute to my sales resistance.

Gas mileage issues have moved to the top of my list of reasons for not purchasing a new family car. According to the Jan. 3 NCT article, "Record gas prices signify a crude reality," other consumers apparently agree. Sadly, too many of the 2008 family vehicles are gas-guzzlers at a time when peak oil prices are skyrocketing and more increases are on the horizon.

Many consumers, myself included, can no longer afford to drive from one end of Escondido and back again in a car that gets 12 miles to the gallon. Commuting to and from San Diego in the same car is akin to flushing dollar bills down the toilet just to watch them swirl away into the abyss.

An article, "Luxury car dealers pull into Escondido," in the Jan. 20 NCT recently described how Lexus, Audi and Suzuki dealerships were moving into Escondido. The sentence that caught my eye described how Suzuki's "fuel-efficient cars have become more appealing with rising gas prices." These fuel-efficient vehicles have contributed to an increase of 12 percent in domestic sales of Suzuki cars in 2007.

I'm not surprised. The only surefire way to increase local auto sales is to improve the gas mileage of new vehicles. If a family car can get 30 to 40 miles per gallon, I would consider it an investment. For me, the words "fuel-efficient" trump every other advertising or marketing gimmick.

Escondido resident Dennis M. Clausen is a freelance columnist for the North County Times.