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My 2001 Saturn SC1 with about 115,000 highway miles on it has gone from getting almost 40 mpg to about 18 mpg in the last week.  The car has also lost power and has been refusing to start and stalling (on occasion, although this is becoming more frequent lately). This usually stops after I have driven it for a few minutes.  The car has a manual transmission and had plugs and wires at about 85,000 miles, according to the guy I bought it from.   It gets driven pretty heavily. 80 miles a day roundtrip to work. Any ideas as to what the problem might be? thx  

is the check engine light on???

i wonder if the spark plug wires got a tiny dab of silicone dielectric tune up grease inside the boots to seal them to the spark plugs... some times when they don't they start to leak high voltage out from under the boots and that makes it run bad...
if the spark plugs are misfiring... it will set a code... and turn on the check engine light...



without looking at the car its hard to tell... it is an OBD2 car... so any OBD2 scanner or code reader will be able to pull trouble codes from the system...  if the check engine light is on...    depending on which code is set.. the system may roll back the power and cut the fuel economy to protect the motor... with some scanners  you can actually look at the live sensor voltages the computer is seeing...  really makes it easy to trouble shoot...

have you changed the fuel filter ?????  those do clog..    how is the air cleaner...   have you checked your tires for air pressure???  one going flat will make a difference in fuel economy... but it won't cause the hard starting and stalling..