300C Fuel economy

New cars are usually lousy on gas mileage for the first few thousand miles.

Lower, yes. "Lousy", no. If the demonstrator was getting 14.7 in the first few thousand miles, it certainly isn't going to rocket up to 22 or anything close after that time.

-Stern

I presume he was referring to an on-board mileage calculator. Anyone bother to compare their electronic average readout to their manual calculations after a few fill ups?

Also if the demo 300C was used to show off, mileage did not reflect displacement savings when cruising, assuming they exist.

You have that a bit backwards. EPA numbers are "a little close" and "pretty optimistic".

RP

A demonstrator is definitely worst case because test drives are short and everyone stomps on the gas pedal to see what it can do. That's why I'm asking about real world experience. The car weighs two tons so you wouldn't expect it to get great mileage but I would like to know what to expect. So anyone who has one, what are you getting in every day driving and what have you gotten on a long highway trip?

Well, but the demonstrator probably gets "performance tested" about 8 times per day (every time someone takes it out for a test drive....) and never does more than 3 miles at a time of steady highway cruising.

My experience with cars purchased since roughly 1990 (4 vehicles in the extended family) and with a few rentals is that I can usually EXCEED the EPA highway mileage by a pretty good bit. The most outstanding example was a '92 5.2 Dakota that my father bought. I forget what the EPA sticker was, but I think it was under 20 mpg highway, and he used to routinely get 22-23 mpg with it. Measured mpg, not computer-calculated mpg, too.

That's completely opposite to my 70s and 80s experience when EPA mileage was often a good 30% optimistic on both numbers.

Anyone bother

calculations

reflect

short and

Haven't had mine long enough for a highway trip but I'm getting close to the EPA estimate for combined mileage. With that much power under the hood, I frankly don't care what mileage I get since it's still better than my Kia Sedona minivan and the driving pleasure is light years ahead.

I guess you don't have the fortunate pleasure of having to buy the required, mandated California "reformulated" gasoline that does improve the air we breathe (?) but doesn't fare well on mileage - at least not on our Pacifica AWD that my wife drives, our '96 T&C LXi that I drive, our '93 GC Laredo that my newly licensed daughter drives or our '91 Honda LX that my son drives (of course, we ARE California drivers so that could also have something to do with it!).

Er, we do in NJ and all it does is use more gas which puts more pollutants back in the air. So, how is this helping?

Ken

Obviously you DIDN'T see the question mark in parenthesis after the word breathe (it wasn't to question my spelling of the word!)??????? And your gasoline in NJ is oxygenated and has MTBE (which, of course, is outlawed in California but is used anyway) added? The story we get is the gas for California is formulated just for California but maybe NJ and others have decided it is worth the scam to say so to charge more. I can say, though, that our air is considerably cleaner than years ago and we do not have many Smog Alerts anymore, but the mileage DOES suffer.

RP

Art wrote: > Anyone bother

On 2 seperate occasions, I compared the trip computer with manual calculations, and both times the trip computer was off by .1

Trip computer: 22.5 My calculation: 22.4

Pretty amazing accuracy.

I think you misunderstood the post as I did see the ? in your post.

My point was that our gas mileage suffers when we're forced to use this garbage and that I can't see how it helps when we are putting more pollutants back in the air. Or, at least that's the way it appears to me. This isn't directed to you as it's a question for anyone who may offer an opposing view.

Ken

Just wondering.

-NG '04, '03 Neon SXTs

Your right it's a 3.5.