Move over oil burners.. New cars reach 40MPG.

[faethor]

NY Auto show displayed...
36MPG – Subaru Impreza
38MPG – GM Malibu ECO
40MPG – Hyundai Sonata Hybrid
37MPG – Nissan Versa
40MPG – Hyundai Accent
40MPG – Mazda3

The lowest cost here was the Versa at about $11,000.

VW Golf Diesel is $24,000 and at 42MPG the extra cost for Diesel doesn't make up that small of a difference. Of course the plus here is 236 ft-lbs of torque which is nearly twice the Versa. So the get up and go is much better on the TDI.


As a side note my wife just traded in our 2006 Ford Expedition King Ranch w/112K miles for a 2009 Subaru Forester LL Bean w/ 46K miles. (She's 6' 1" and needs a tall vehicle to be comfortable). She got about 14MPG in the Expedition for a daily driver. She's seeing 25MPG in the Forester. She's got a heavy foot. I drove it for a weekend and got 28.3MPG. The deal was swap of vehicles + $1K out of pocket. At $320 in gas for her last month she'll make that up this year. Of course why she loved the Forester is she's a sunroof lover and it's huge. And she wanted extra room in the back to bring our Lab/Pyrnees mix and Collie with her. Gotta have priorities.

 

[redrumloa]

Of course the plus here is 236 ft-lbs of torque which is nearly twice the Versa. So the get up and go is much better on the TDI.

Bingo! The Golf TDI is a sporty compact car which is actually fun to drive. I assume these other cars are sub-compact and do 0-60 in an hour or so.

That said I am happy to see gasoline powered cars inching up closer to the TDI. My next car purchase may be one of these. I'll need to test drive them to see if I could live with the pitiful performance, let alone actually fit in one.

our Lab/Pyrnees mix

Holy crap, you have a Lab/Pyrnees mix too? I thought we were the only ones! Did your dog act like Satan's spawn when it was a puppy like ours did?

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

NY Auto show displayed...
36MPG – Subaru Impreza
38MPG – GM Malibu ECO
40MPG – Hyundai Sonata Hybrid
37MPG – Nissan Versa
40MPG – Hyundai Accent
40MPG – Mazda3

The lowest cost here was the Versa at about $11,000.

My wife picked up her Accent for $8000 ... but of course, that's Canadian so about $11,000 US.

Actually she got is used but it was only 8 months old.

 

[faethor]

Of course the plus here is 236 ft-lbs of torque which is nearly twice the Versa. So the get up and go is much better on the TDI.

Bingo! The Golf TDI is a sporty compact car which is actually fun to drive. I assume these other cars are sub-compact and do 0-60 in an hour or so.

That said I am happy to see gasoline powered cars inching up closer to the TDI. My next car purchase may be one of these. I'll need to test drive them to see if I could live with the pitiful performance, let alone actually fit in one.

2012 Subaru Impreza is the same length and width as the 2011 Impreza. The wheels were moved about an inch apart. It's got a 2L instead of a 2.5L. The additional space was used to add about 2" more leg room to both front and back seats. While a smaller engine and smaller HP the lightening of the vehicle and CVT transmission allows it to not only make better MPG but do 0-60sec a bit quicker.

Golf TDI is in the 8-8.5 second range. Subaru gives the Impreza a 9.8sec 0-60 time. So indeed we can see where that extra torque lies with the Diesel. Fuji Heavy Industries has a diesel in Europe. At one time they were supposedly bringing it to the USA. Though no sign of it yet. The USA has more strigent rules. The flat diesel might not comply.

[quote:2fom9s6c]our Lab/Pyrnees mix

Holy crap, you have a Lab/Pyrnees mix too? I thought we were the only ones! Did your dog act like Satan's spawn when it was a puppy like ours did?[/quote:2fom9s6c] Xago is a bit over 80 pounds and it's muscle. We got him from the pound because he was on death row. He had been taken out of the pound 2 times and brought back each time. He was indeed Satan's spawn. He thought your arm was a tug rope, which wasn't good for about a year old 60+ pound puppy. It took hime about 3 months of daily training to not focus on the arm but focus on a toy.

About this 5th birthday he started settling down and now 7 he's a very good dog. Though if you rile him up and get too rambuckous his naughty puppy self comes back out. Oh and basically any toy is destroyed in seconds. The 'impervious' dog toys were great as he'd take about an hour to destroy those.

 

[ilwrath]

The lowest cost here was the Versa at about $11,000.

VW Golf Diesel is $24,000 and at 42MPG the extra cost for Diesel doesn't make up that small of a difference. Of course the plus here is 236 ft-lbs of torque which is nearly twice the Versa. So the get up and go is much better on the TDI.

Yeah, I rented one of those Versa while on vacation last year. (Cheapest rent-a-car I could get on short notice.) Anyhow.... ouch. Definitely not a car you'd want to drive if you have any real choice in the matter. (I mean, it beats public transit, and it's more practical than a Smart ForTwo, but that isn't saying much!) That little four cylinder engine attached to a CVT makes for all the fun of a kick to the jewels. Merging onto a highway is quite the experience, too. The RPM slowly climb to the redline then stay there. The rental agency should have warned me it was a CVT. I tried lifting to let it shift before I realized what it was doing. (Yeah, the acceleration was so poor that I couldn't feel the ratio was still adjusting to accelerate the car as I was trying to merge. XD )

Give me a small torquey engine and a real manual, any day over that garbage.

 

[redrumloa]

Dogs

Xago is a bit over 80 pounds and it's muscle. We got him from the pound because he was on death row. He had been taken out of the pound 2 times and brought back each time. He was indeed Satan's spawn. He thought your arm was a tug rope, which wasn't good for about a year old 60+ pound puppy. It took hime about 3 months of daily training to not focus on the arm but focus on a toy.

About this 5th birthday he started settling down and now 7 he's a very good dog. Though if you rile him up and get too rambuckous his naughty puppy self comes back out. Oh and basically any toy is destroyed in seconds. The 'impervious' dog toys were great as he'd take about an hour to destroy those.

Great stuff! I may or may not have told you our horror stories with Jynx already. Wayne knows pretty much first hand how bad she was the first year or so. She would eat concrete, brass fittings on the water heater, carpet, drywall, dust bunnies and just about anything else. You would take her outside to do her business and stay outside with her for 30 minutes and as soon as you brought her back inside, she would run away from you to go crap on the carpet. I could go on and on with stories. We came very close to bringing Jynx to the Humane Society in Huntsville (which has a no kill policy) the first ~year. I am very happy with stuck with her as she became an amazingly good dog. She still has her quirks like wanting to bark at everything, but overall she is such a sweetheart.

Devil dog - Dec 2006

Jynx more recently

 

[faethor]

Red -- nice looking dog. Ours is black w/ a white patch on his chest. We didn't get him until he was a year old so perhaps missed the eating everything phase? Though on Sunday my 4 year old niece apparently forgot her babydoll outside. I came home today to find a doll body w/ 1 arm, 1 leg, and half a head.

 

[faethor]

Oops I'm faster at clicking submit than Whyzzat changes screens apparently.