Car annoyance

[fbhjr]

I get very annoyed at the (many) car commercials I see on TV these days.
There are several that bill their cars as having “surprisingly good milage”, but the fine print says they only get 24 miles per gallon.


Over the last two weekends driving to New Jersey, my 10 year old, 234000 miles driven, station wagon got 37 miles per gallon with me, my wife, the sword troupe’s tent, all the swords, my armor, a cooler of stuff and luggage in it.

My old Saturn sedan got more than 40 on the highway.

It bothers me that 24 is defined as “surprisingly good milage”.

Comments

[morgan-lafaye.livejournal.com]

Silly man, stop reading the fine print. Why do you think the auto companies are swirling the drain? I did see a saturn wagon, same color,a few less miles on it, for sale. The way yours has preformed,I'd get it if I could. It would probably last longer than alot of newer cars.

[malterre.livejournal.com]

yeah that torques me too.

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

yeah...24 is not good mileage.

I didn't know yours was getting high 30's, that is fantastic. That wagon of yours is amazing.

Ladyhawke's Hyundai gets high 30's if not 40's, and that's at least 5 years old.

Quinton from Leg III had a Ford Escort wagon that hit 300,000+ miles, although I don't know what he was getting for mpg, but it had to have been pretty good. He's got a Focus now and thinks he's getting in the 30's.

I don't have an F-105 Thud icon yet...Even though it's one of my favorite fighters, Talk about gas-guzzling :P

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

My little Saturn 4-door sedan also routinely got 37-38 mpg. Aaah, the good old days. A *partially* valid reason for some reduction in fuel economy these days is the replacement of MTBE eith ethyl alcohol as an oxidizing additive in the fuel. The ethanol has less caloric energy per unit volume, and we have presently 10% mixture of ethanol, by volume (and congress is planning to up the max percentage to 15% later this summer). This wouldn't reduce fuel mileage by 10-15% as there is still a fair amount of chemical energy in ethanol, but it is less than gasoline or MBTE, so that could account for maybe 5% reduction in fuel mileage.

But, I agree, car companies havebeen consistently lowering the bar and telling us how "great" it is, for sometime. I remember Hondas in the early 80s getting over 40 MPG with what we would now consider ancient technology. One of the big culprits is that cars have become so darn heavy now, even compared to a similar physical size car from 20 years ago.
To compensate, they make higher horsepower engines, and the spiral continues..

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

With my Saturn it isn't a rating, it is what I actually measured over the last two weeks.

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree, same as with my old Saturn. I checked the weights of the old Saturn against comparably sized Hondas and Fords and found that the Saturns generally weighed at least 300 pounds lighter, and sometimes almost 500 pounds less than newer, similar size cars. We also routinely get 29-30 and sometimes 31-32 MPG with our 10+ year old, 210K mile all wheel drive Subaru Forester, which was EPA rated at 27 MPG when we bought it new. Another thing I've discovered is that the EPA test loop for measuring official EPA mileage has changed in the past 5 years or so, and supposedly now more closely emulates how most people drive their cars. I think that this has also caused the average fuel economy posted on cars to suffer a bit, but the auto manufacturers only try to do the bare minimum to meet the CAFE requirements, and not exceed them by any means. I think that if they had some sort of business tax incentives, like "if your entire product-line CAFE standard is at least 2 MPG BETTER than the government's requirement, you will get xx% reduction in your business taxes, and if you are 3.5 MPG better you'll get an even larger tax break, would get their butts going in the right direction again.

My wife and I also scoff at the "Look at this 24 MPG car - isn't that fantastic" ads on TV, sad.

[capt-amos.livejournal.com]

LOL.
I guess "good" is relative.
My Honda Accord does get around 35mpg on the Hwy.
However, my 89 Firebird with the 350 cubic inch V8 gets about 14mpg.
And it takes premium gas!

So in my world, I consider "good" to be a little above average. So 24 is right about there for me. :-)

Needless to say, I bought the Firebird when gas was $1.50 per gallon for premium, and it doesn't get driven much anymore. :-)

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I quit buying premium gas when it hit $1 a gallon. That was just too much to pay for gas.
Ah, 1986, if only I could still buy gas then...