I finely got a new car yesterday. I got a slightly used '06 Grand Prix black/black....Sweet. Haven't bought a new car in 13 years. The sales man told me that with the research he has done people have reported getting 34 highway mpg's from their 3800 engines Buicks, Pontiacs etc. Has any one else heard this. I'm hoping gasket problems are a thing of the past!! Once I sat in the GP that was it for me. I originally went out to look for a Vibe. The Vibes are reported as getting about the same mpg's with what I found not nearly the comfort. I'm a fairly big guy. Any input?
I have a '98 GP with the 3800 engine that's been maintained beautifully, and if it gets 34 mpg hwy, it'd have to be rolling down a steep grade with a good tail wind. 25-27 mpg hwy is more like it.
We've had it since 2000 - no problem with the gaskets (knock wood). Drove an '06 when we were out of town a few months ago - it's pretty sweet, but I surprised how much smaller the backseat is between the new ones and my last century model!
I have a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix with a 3.8L V6 without the supercharger. I make two 2-hour trips per week, so I get a lot of highway miles. The lower MPG values were weeks I did not make either of my 2-hour trips or just one of them. The highest MPGs were when I did about 78 MPH during my trip. I noticed a .3 to .5 decrease in MPG when driving 83 MPH versus 78 MPH on my trips. Here is some of my data for gas mileage:
Glad to see you're happy with your GP. I wish I could say the same about my '04 GT1. So far it's been nothing but trouble. The steering wheel had to be replaced after repeated attempts to get the horn of all things to work properly and even the NEW replacement steering wheel had to be tweaked to get the horn to work like it should. The A/C air recirculator failed and had to be replaced. The service crew at my dealer screwed up the fix for the A/C by forgetting to replace the shroud that keeps rain from getting in the cabin. It rained after the work was done and flooded the car. I didn't know about it until days later when I got around to driving the car. There was about 5 gallons of water on the passenger side. The dealer felt so bad he replaced the carpet padding for free. The steering shaft had to be replaced due to some clunky noises. 7000 miles later the noises came back and this time it was out of warranty by only 3 or
4 thousand miles. But by far my biggest pet peeve as far as the '04 model year is concerned is that I get horrible sun glare reflecting in my eyes from the bottom of the instrument cluster's Plexiglas shield. It happens when the sun is directly overhead during the midday hours. I can't find a seating position where I can avoid it.
The GP has only 39,000 miles on it and it's been more trouble than the old '96 Escort LX I had with 150,000 miles.
I've got a 95 generation 3 3800 that gets about 25mpg on average. It's in a Olds 88 Royale. I don't do a lot of expressway driving, but even when I do it stays in that ballpark.
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