Gas prices (and diesel prices) aren’t exactly great right now. There is a war on, or a few actually, and that’s doing little to help the situation. That leads me to today’s Autopian Asks—what’s the worst fuel economy you’re willing to put up with?
Of course, this applies strictly to cars that burn fossil fuels. We can argue about how many fathoms per joule you get out of your EV, but it’s just going to confuse things. We’re talkin’ liquids here, baby.
This question is one that is important car enthusiasts and normies alike. If you’re into cars, you’re probably willing to trade off some fuel economy for better performance, or for a vehicle that truly lights up your heart. If you’re a normie, you might see cars as appliances, and you just want the best efficiency possible. Alternatively, you might demand a certain level of luxury or cargo space at the cost of some extra fuel burn.
I grew up during the turmoil of the second Gulf War, albeit in the safe confines of Australia. We saw our gas prices hit new highs, and I was stuck driving a 1992 Ford Falcon. It had no working odometer, so I couldn’t accurately measure its fuel economy. Regardless, that 4.0-liter six sure loved to suck down the dino juice, and I’d estimate it was pulling down around 15 L/100 km around town, or around 15 mpg in your American money.
That formative experience routinely sent me broke. Since then, I’ve owned a wide variety of cars, and I’ve settled on a figure I find comfortable. It’s 10 L/100 km, or about 23 mpg. My 1998 Mercedes E240, 1992 Daihatsu Feroza, and 1992 Mazda Miata all hit about this mark. They were all cool in their own ways, and they justified their fuel use in turn.
I’ve had more efficient cars, of course. My BMW 320D routinely achieves 29 mpg or better. My 1989 Mazda 121 was a star at 36 mpg. That made them more attractive. By contrast, I felt strongly compelled to sell my Volvo 740 Turbo wagon when its fuel economy mysteriously slipped from 19 mpg to 15 mpg over a few months.
My question to you is thus—what’s the worst fuel economy you’re willing to put up with and why? Maybe it’s for performance, maybe it’s for seating, maybe you’re making a trade-off by running big chunky mud tires. Sound off and tell me how much pain you can take at the pump!
Realistically, I have no lower limit for fuel economy on a vehicle that at least somewhat justifies it. And I mean it, all the way down to a literal semi truck.
My current daily gets about 15mpg. This is bad, and I am working on changing that.
Lol. I hear you. When I say I get 5.75 mpg in a Pete 389, most people say that is atrocious, but people that know trucks say that’s really good. I have a buddy getting 10 hypermiling a Cascadia and regular folk say thats horrible but truckers say that’s unbelievable.
Having a short daily commute means fuel economy doesn’t really matter all that much, to me. My current DD averages 18/26 mpg, but I drive it less than 8k miles per year. I’d be ok going as low as 16/20 for a daily if it was justifiable by capability or character.
This where I’m at. My commute has become very short in the last few years, which is why I still daily drive a 20 year old car that gets 17mpg combined. It’s long-since paid off, so the fuel expenditures of driving it only 4-5k miles per year isn’t a big deal. The 10mpg of my old F250 V10 work truck left me only driving it when needed, so I guess less than 17mpg but more than 10mpg is where my limit is.
I started playing this new, fun game in the V10 Touareg where I put it on instant fuel economy and see how long it’s in single digits. Less funny when I realized the only time it isn’t is when I’m coasting.
My daily (2013 4Runner) gets slightly about 20 if I drive mostly highway and keep it under 70. Winter is 18.5-ish. I’m used to that, but I don’t love it.
The main reason I care is that I commute 60 miles a day and total about 400 miles a week. I fill it up every week to the tune of around 19 gallons/ 65 bucks, give or take a few.
I’ve done the math a few times, and since this vehicle is paid off and reliable, buying a car that gets even double the mileage does not make financial sense. The fuel savings the first year wouldn’t even cover the sales tax and registration.
Plus, the 4R is extremely versatile, switching to a small car would be hard to do The new 4Runner will maybe get 25 and will cost around 60K. Upgrading for that makes ZERO sense.
I suppose there’s always buying a 5k 15 y/o economy car as a beater, but a lot of those are going to not get awesome mileage either,
If I didn’t have the commute, I’d probably not care at all. My brother was recently driving himself crazy trying to find a used hybrid that fit into his budget, he finally came to the conclusion that since he only drives 5k/yr. or so, it really didn’t matter that much. (I had been telling him that all along haha)
I’d probably drive a Suburban or a Wrangler on 37’s if I only drove 5k a year.
“buying a 5k 15 y/o economy car as a beater” is immediately what everybody assumed when you said “buying a car that gets even double the mileage”.
Of course buying a brand new car doesn’t make financial sense, it literally never ever has, in any circumstances.
A lot of people use that as justification to buy a new vehicle.
My 4.0L TJ is not great on gas. Especially with the larger tires I installed. As it is a second car/beater for when the snow is BAD, I only put 2000 km or so each year on it.
My brother DD’s an F250 with the 6.8L V10. He farms with our dad and pulls a cattle trailer with it. He says that gets about 10-11 mpg.
For daily life, I prefer a small car but not something gutless. My DD WRX is averaging around 30 mpg.
It is what it is. In general, I don’t care. I have what cars I have because I wanted those cars, not because I was seeking something specific.
With that said, my next car will be electric (hopefully) due to maintenance, not cost of ownership. I am now more concerned with maintenance of a vehicle than cost. I’m getting older, and I need my cars to be easier to maintain. I’m starting to get VERY tired of crawling under a car to do anything. We are loosely looking for replacements, and this is my only real concern. I don’t even want AWD anymore because it’s simply pointless (fight me) and adds SO much more hassle to maintaining a vehicle, and I live in the Northeast.
That’s how I’ve always been, I’ve been driving for almost 30 years and have never bought a car based solely on fuel economy. Up until my 30’s that was never even a concern.
daily driver, mid 30’s – Let’s face it, there’s no good reason anyone should have to go lower than this to get a quality, comfortable, performant enough family hauler, so I’ve got to go with the environmentally and fiscally responsible choice.
alternative daily driver, high 20’s – Having made the previous statement, I could be convinced to go down to high 20’s on the family hauler, but it’s got to be reeeeeally nice. Luxury/performance/looks aren’t really good reasons to do it, but they might be good enough.
work commuter, low 20’s – For a toy. It’s a short hop to work so it’s not too irresponsible to have a spot of fun each day heading to and from the drudgery.
As we’re a mostly hybrid home, anything under 35-40 mpg makes me twitch a bit. That being said, my Coupe deVille got probably 12 on it’s best day ever, and the M3 maybe makes 20-ish? Don’t care about either. The toys can get as bad as possible, and won’t really phase me.
For my daily, anything less than 45mpg has me checking the wheel alignment. Hybrid thrift has ruined me. I went from a 25-on-a-good-day Forester to this; the difference in fuel expenses damn near covered the payments on the car.
My truck is old, small and not powerful; without working at it it returns over 25mpg when towing. Anymore I won’t consider less than 30mpg from a truck. Why hang on to one that does better for so long to get something new that performs worse, takes up way more room, and isn’t even paid off? No: a new truck will need to deliver way better fuel economy before I can justify its expense. The fuel cost is the greatest fraction of the vehicle’s overall cost.
What pickup do you drive?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Toyota_Hilux_1987_%2815033554768%29.jpg
Except mine is blue.
Okay, so when you say “25mpg when towing”, are you towing like 200 pounds?
About 1500, trailer included.
Okay, yeah, that sounds about right. I used to work for a guy who averaged 43mpg highway in a diesel Toyota. And yeah, 25mpg while towing is very reasonable if it’s a tiny pickup and a tiny trailer. Not even crazy diesel efficiency at that point, I bet my Accord could do similar with similar weight behind it.
It’s worth noting that a large fraction of Americans have a legitimate need for more capability from a pickup(honestly 1500lb isn’t even pickup territory, many sedans will do that easily), and that’s why may pickups are so much more thirsty.
Also worth noting that “not powerful” is the understatement of the century lol
My son pulls the same trailer with similar loads behind his Volt; he says his EV miles drops from about 37 miles range to 20. He’s done it many, many times and he reports that not only does the car handle it well, it appears to handle it better than the truck does.
Also it points up how a lot of people don’t need a truck if they can just strap a hitch to their car. If you’re moving 8000 lbs more than four times a year I’d say yeah, get sufficient grunt to pull that around. But for people like me, not shifting more than a half-ton at a time, it’s superfluous. Even when I’m towing a few times per month, anything more than this much truck is just silly.
Is it 2wd? Diesel? My first vehicle was an ’87 4wd (also blue). Standard cab and the standard 22R with 5spd. No lift, stock size AT tires. I don’t think it ever broke 20mpg.
Nope, gas. But the 4WD never got great fuel economy even with the stock tires. 20mpg on one of those is a good, good day, lightly loaded and modest speeds. The extra driveline, height and tire just puts too much load on the engine and pushes it outside of its best torque regime. The 2WD, being lighter, lower, having half as many driven outputs and having better aero drag under all circumstances is way closer to the engine’s sweet spot.
Seriously, wtf is towing anything worth noting and still returning 25mpg? Maybe this is a flat-lander thing? When I’m towing 8k, I’m not anywhere near 20 let alone 25.
I can’t tow 8000 lbs. My towing needs have never been more than modest but there are times when you have to tow stuff that simply doesn’t fit in the bed. A couple of lawn tractors for instance, or bales of insulation come to mind. And knowing I’m never going to tow 8000 lbs, I wouldn’t consider having a truck that could. It would be foolish in the extreme to waste money on unneeded capacity.
You are definitely not American. Round the us, we need a one ton dually just because we “might need it.” My brother said those exact words. My dad said we have a farm with a big pickup and a semi truck. You don’t need a dually.
I’m American.
Some days I follow that up with “…unfortunately.” Not every day. Some days, I just look at the other vehicles – the other, gigantic vehicles with only one person in them – and shake my head sadly.
For a daily driver 20mpg. For a toy, no lower limit, it’s a toy after all.
My current average MPG which hovers around 29-31 is the lowest I’ll go. Ideally I’d upgrade to a hybrid and pull in almost 50mpg but I’m working on some things that are preventing that from happening for the foreseeable future.
I had an FC RX7 that did 17mpg. (14 mpg in freedom gallons) I was ok with that. I had a Nissan Silvia that did 12mpg (10 US mpg) and that made me unhappy.
My GT86 averages 36mpg and will get high forties with a bit of effort. I’m very happy with this, even on 97 RON fuel.
That’s Imperial gallons, I’m not doing all the maths for you.
A rotary getting better fuel economy then a 4-cylinder sports car is incredible.
The Silvia was broken, and turboed. The welded diff didn’t help either. It also invited a certain driving style that wasn’t conducive to economy.
But it sort of worked, and the 12mpg wasn’t bad enough for me to try fixing it, just bad enough to complain about.
97 RON petrol at my local station is £1.69/litre. $8.14/US gallon.
Depends on the use case. DD – 25mpg+. Any other use case? I don’t really care. I use my DD for long trips 90% of the time, so the MPG of my other garbage doesn’t really impact my bottom line. They are just for fun.
14/15 mpg is the absolute unloaded minimum for me and that’s full-sized truck values.
~ 50-mile rural round trip commute daily
It’s nice in the summer to ride my ’22 klr and get 48 mpg.
I had a borrowed hot-rodded dodge Durango for a while, 8mpg was pretty painful.
For a daily driver that’s fun to drive, a real world around 30 mpg average per tank. Focus ST averaged just under that over its lifetime and the GR86 is a little above. A daily driver that isn’t fun (if I had to), it would have to be close to 40 and do it on cheapest fuel. For something older that’s not a daily, whatever it gets (though it probably wouldn’t be too big of a gas hog, either).
One of the reasons I got an EV for my daily was so MPG in whatever weekend vehicle I had could be absolutely atrocious and it wouldn’t affect the monthly budget.
My old Jeep gets 13-15mpg and I couldn’t care less. Driving it for leisure, I only need to fill it a few times a year at $60 a pop. I’ve considered getting a UNIMOG or deuce and a half and even low single digit mpg wouldn’t matter.
Charging my EV daily driver at home is about $24/month for all my normal commuting and errands.
I split my daily driving between my ’05 Escalade ESV (6.0 AWD), and my ’79 VW Westy (2.0, dual Dellorto 40s). The Escalade routinely manages 12-13 around town and 16-17hwy on E10, and the bus seems to average 15-16mpg or so in mostly in-town driving, but requires non-ethanol fuel.
Now, I work from home, so I no longer have the 22-mile daily commute I had in the Beforetimes, and I live in OK, where fuel prices generally stay lower than the national average (currently $2.99 for E10). Where the Escalade is concerned, I justify it through the fact that 1. It’s an ultra-reliable and comfortable GMT800, 2. It’s paid off, 3. It currently only has a shade over 100k miles, and 4. I routinely need to pull a tandem-axle trailer hauling one of the decrepit VWs I insist on keeping around. All that being said, I can put up with some pretty crappy mileage given the use case. And I understand what a privilege that is in the world of 2024.
I should add that we also own a 2019 Golf Alltrack that gets 30-32hwy, that serves as my wife’s primary driver and occasional roadtripper. We also have two kids under the age of 10, and a 4-hour trip to Dallas this weekend in the Alltrack with those two a-holes in the back seat reminded us that sometimes paying the higher fuel bill is worth it.
Gas prices don’t affect me much because I don’t drive much. I think we fill our cars about once a month or so. My Maverick gets close to 40 mpg and my Benz probably gets low 20s, though I probably get closer to 30 and my wife probably gets closer to 20. I equate fuel economy with pollution (I know this isn’t necessarily correct), so I like to have a reasonably high MPG, like 25+. While this doesn’t necessarily sound like much, the beaters we had when I was growing up probably averaged around 10 mpg. I’m willing to accept less if it’s a performance vehicle, and I expect more if it’s an economy car.
I average around 13. So that.
My ’77 F250 gets around 5 mpg. I used that as a daily driver for 3 years when I only drove ~4000 miles per year due to a short commute. I wasn’t bothered by the poor fuel economy as much as the small fuel tank (15 gallons). Even with my 4 mile round trip commute I still had to fill up weekly. Worse yet, if I took it on the highway I could see the needle moving on the fuel gauge.
I recently added a 44 gallon tank which makes it much better to drive. The fuel economy still sucks (although I have been getting 7 mpg after adding the new tank; I have no idea why that is happening), but at least I can drive ~200 miles between fuel stops.
Post engine rebuild, our F250 just got 8MPG highway with a camper in the bed, and 7.5 on the way home with camper + empty horse trailer. I’d love to do better, but the 460 is thirsty no mater what you do.
The weird thing about these trucks is that MPG doesn’t seem to change depending on how I am using it. My truck gets similar MPG in the city and highway, as well as when towing or hauling.
My truck also has some mild performance modifications and 35 inch off road tires, though. It also doesn’t help that it has a 3 speed automatic. On the highway it is going at ~3500 rpm. I imagine a 460 burns a substantial amount of fuel just running at that speed.
A friend had a ’97 Dodge 2500 with the V10 that acted similarly. It got 10MPG under every condition.
Haha, I feel your pain on that. When I was a kid I had a squarebody Chevy on 35’s with a 16gallon tank and a 350 with a Holley 650, I was ALWAYS putting fuel in that thing.
I put up with some pretty low fuel economy in some of my cars, but none really get that much usage. I balance it with my wife’s PHEV that operates on electric so much that we only fill up the 10 gallon tank every 5 weeks or so, but it gets in the low 40’s for MPG when we take long trips.
We are typically under 10-12,000 miles a year on all our cars. I have an 8 mile commute just 2 days a week, and the wife has just a 1 mile commute.
My truck probably averages about 19 and only gets between 11-12 when towing. I have it to tow and it gets driven to work 2 times a week and that’s about it (I work from home 3 days a week). It’s usually getting 9-10,000 miles a year.
My middle son’s 08 STS with a Northstar is probably the worst on gas, but the car was a hand me down from my parents, is long paid off and gas is the only real expense. It gets around 15-16 in city driving. It can get in the high 20’s if you set the cruise at 70 and just go, but it’s a gas hog around town. But he’s still in college and probably averages under 5,000 miles a year. Since I got it almost 6 years ago, its only needed a battery, tires, fluid changes, and rear brakes, so I’m certainly not going to complain about the bad fuel economy. The running costs are super cheap. I do hope to get him something newer eventually, but hopefully this will keep running well to get passed down to kid #3.
My commute is sub 10km so day to day it wouldn’t make a huge difference. My Kia averages 9.5 to 10 l/100km (24-25 mpg) around town or on the highway and I can easily live with that. My Mustang isn’t great, on the highway it gets 12l/100km (20mpg) and daily commute is 15l/100km (15mpg). If I had a longer commute I’d not drive it much despite the massive smile I have driving it even after 13 years.
If my commute was longer or I drove more wouldn’t want below 30mpg.
Same. My Legacy only gets about 25MPG on my ~2 mile commute and I just don’t care.
6 months ago I was living with an F150 that got 16mpg but only driving it 3500 miles a year. Combined with a 36 gal tank meant I was only filling up every month or two and getting my grocery store points $1 per gallon discount took some of the pain away. Still, the $110 fill up wasn’t unusual.
Worst of all time was my 85 F150 that got 10 mpg and took premium. I was driving 15k miles a year at that time and gas was about $1 per gallon.
Why on earth were you putting premium fuel in a 1985 f150
It had the 351 HO and thats what it took.
My previous DD got 10-12mpg around town and maybe 15-16 highway. The payoff was having 510hp available via the right pedal. I was quite happy to live with that since I was driving only 6K-7K miles each year.
As a friend put it, I would have gotten better mileage if I’d kept my foot out of the water pump. 🙂
The current DD will get 32 highway from a 2-liter turbo, which is nice considering I’m driving a bit more these days.
I’ll deal with high teens mixed but that highway mileage better be near 10 higher. It’s why I’ve stopped myself from pulling the trigger on German cars multiple times.