My sister in California is thinking of buying a "used" Luxury car / sedan around 5 years old like a Mercedes or Lexus.
She is confused as to the gas mileage for 6 cylinder and 8 cylinder luxury cars and the related cost of gas.
I was told that for normal driving say 10,000 miles or so in a year, the cost difference wasn't much on a weekly basis even with these high gas prices.
Is the story any different with 6 cyl and 8 cyl SUVs ?
Pls educate us on this as we are NOT all knowledgeable
It's not quite as simple as the cylinder count, but in general terms a 6 will yield better mileage than an 8. The advantage is most apparent in city and mixed driving, less so if you drive mostly on the highway (of course in the LA basin, the highway is just a multilane variety of city driving much of the time).
Using my BMW as an example (a six) I get about 25 MPG in mixed but mostly urban/suburban driving. The V-8 variant gets about 18 at best. Given your
10,000 miles and $3 premium (it will come again), that's $1200 versus $1667 annually. The V-8 advantage in acceleration isn't relevant 99% of the time to me. If it is to your sister, then $467 is a slight premium for the extra grunt (on CA freeways?).
The BMW 8 is generally more demanding upon maintenance and the cost is higher. Not relevant if you're leasing or turning the car over every 3 years/36,000 miles. More so if you plan to keep it.
More or less the same. Most 6 cyl SUV's are relatively smaller and lighter,
8's are in the larger machines. Some 8 cyl SUV's get a whopping 12 MPG around town.
The mileage for a modern V6 is slightly higher than that of a modern V8. With highway driving, the difference is not very big. I would estimate
10% lower for a V8 in highway driving and 20% lower in city driving (same car, different engine). With U.S gas prices, that's not too bad. If that was the only reason, I'd defenately go for a V8.
For the current BMW 5 series, EPA mileage is: (6 cyl) 530i - 20 city, 30 highway (8 cyl) 550i - 15 city, 23 highway
Using averages at 200 miles/week and $2.50/gal., the 6 will cost $20.00/week or $1040.00 yearly. The 8 will average $26.30/week or $1368.00 per year. So difference is better than 30% which, for most of us, is pretty significant. Of course, as they say, YMMV!
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