2006 Corolla - fuel economy

Yes, big improvement on mpg after first 8000km as on my 2005 corolla

EPA rated the Corolla 5-speed at 32 city/41 highway (US), so I'd say your mixed driving mileage of 35mpg(US) is good.

My folks have an '04 Corolla CE (which is same as your '06) and they said they got 40mpg(US) on one particular highway trip last fall. And theirs is an automatic.

I've found Consumer Reports mileage figures to be realistic, and they probably rate the Corolla at 20-23 MPG city, 40-45 highway. I've gotten 10% improvement after the first 5,000-10,000 miles, and back when Corollas were carbureted the idle speed would increase from about

750 RPM to 900.

Thanks for the replies - appreciated!

Before purchasing, I read a review on Canadian Driver where they tested a Corolla (and nine other cars) in a realistic "roadtrip" driving situation. They got 911 kilometres from the Corolla before they ran out of gas.

Mind you, that was from full to bone dry, but I was still expecting ~700 km from a tank, assuming a fill-up when the gas light comes on. We're getting just over 600 km thus far.

"

" Interestingly, the gas light comes on with 1/5th of the tank still remaining... I've only pumped about 40 litres into the car so far. So that could be skewing my numbers a bit.

We'll see how it goes - like I say, I'm not exactly disappointed in the mileage... I just think the car can do better! :)

wmd

My youngest sister has one. It's an automatic LE version. She get's

38mpg mixed driving. She's a slow driver though.

Why would anybody even think to take the opinion of a person who would drive a vehicle till it ran our of gas? How smart can that person be to not have enough sense to refill before they ran our of gas? LOL

mike hunt

lol! Obviously the article isn't suggesting that you run a vehicle dry. The point of the article, I think, was to test to see which vehicles were best on gas overall, from full to empty. Running them dry would be the most accurate test of which had the best fuel economy, would it not?

That should reasonably translate into how the vehicles perform in normal driving situations (i.e. filling up at the fuel light, or at 1/4 of a tank according to the manual!) :)

wmd

---------------------- My father's mother, rest her soul, swore up and down you could extend the little bit of gasoline by turning on the wipers. I doubt she was able to travel further. Maybe the gas gauge needle went towards full when she turned the wipers on.

mark_

Not really, unless you were testing two versions of the same car. The different brands may have different tank volumes or shapes which can effect the total amount of gasoline that can be consumed before it runs our of fuel.. If it was indeed a test of similar cars to see which vehicles were best from full to empty the one with the largest tank would win .

Why not simply do a normal refill, as does everybody else, to determine the amount consumed over a determined distance over a given number of tanks full?

mike hunt

They did apparently account for that by ensuring that each car only had

50 litres of fuel to begin with.

Perhaps... I can't say what their rationale was for writing the article or their testing procedures! :) I think they were simply trying to determine which of the ten vehicles had the best fuel economy, and put the cars to a common test. Here's the link to the article again, if you're interested:

"

" It was interesting, none the less! lol

wmd

Please don't feed the trolls.

BTW, the mpg figures in the article are based on imperial gallons and not U.S. gallons. Multiply by 0.8 to convert to miles per U.S. gallon.

How would that effect the car with a fuel tank pickup that is 1/2 inch higher in the tank?

mike hunt

Gotcha... I didn't lurk long enough to know better, I guess! :)

I figured as much... the figures seemed a bit high for US mpg.

You mentioned that your folks got 40 mpg on a highway trip in an automatic, so that sounds promising for summer vacation mileage.

wmd