> Although the gas savings may be negligible, you'll get extended service 
> out
> of your clutch by coasting and using the brakes.
> 
> I'll do brake jobs over clutches any day. Brake pads are cheap and easy.

Tom and Ray of Car Talk fame may have an irrational antipathy towards 
Vanagons, but they have wise words with regard to compression(engine) 
braking vs. brake braking. Paraphrasing: In the process of decelleration the 
energy has to be absorbed somewhere, and that decelleration is inevitably 
going to result in wear on the system doing the work. Here you have a 
choice: downshift, or brake. Now, ask yourself, does it seem better to 
choose to direct that wear into the engine and transmission, the most 
complicated and expensive to repair parts of the car; or into the brakes, 
which are probably the cheapest and easiest to maintain system, and are even 
designed for that task in the first place?

Downshifting made more sense in the bad old days of heavy steel frame cars 
with 4 wheel drums, where you had a fairly small quantity of "braking power" 
and it was wise to conserve it till the vehicle was moving slowly enough to 
stop. Woe be unto him who brakes at 80mph and whose shoes overheat and glaze 
over with the car still going 50mph!