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So while I was amassing all the updated fuel numbers of our long-termers for January's big list of fuel economy, editor Ron Montoya also sent me the numbers for our new mystery long-term vehicle. Naturally I couldn't include it in the list since the intro for it doesn't go up til tomorrow.
But, how good a guesser are you? Can you guess what the new long-termer is just based on its best, worst and average? By the way, the above photo is just clip art.
Hit the jump for the mpg.
I have to say that I've been enjoying driving our new long-term 2012 Chevrolet Sonic LTZ through rush-hour traffic. That's saying a lot considering it's stick.
Usually when the long-term car board comes to me, I pick a car based on where I'm going for the evening. Like, is it way cross town where I have to sit on the notoriously clogged-up 10 East and then cut through the equally bad surface street traffic? Or am I just going straight home, which is just 7 miles from the office, aka 30-45 minutes away? Most of the time I'll go for a car with auto because, let's face it, driving stick in stop-and-go suuuhucks.
But our little Sonic isn't so hard to shift. It's not as light as the Fiat's shifter/clutch but neither is it like our old Mazdaspeed 3. And bonus is that it has a 1.4-liter turbocharged Ecotec engine and 138 horsepower so I can switch lanes quickly and get around the slow pokes and not-so-slow pokes like no one's business.
I see many more rush-hours in our future together. By the way, score on the seat heaters in the Sonic. So effective! More on that later.
Caroline Pardilla, Deputy Managing Editor @ 2,244 miles
If you're not doing anything Sunday night and you're going to be in Southern California, you're invited to come see the redesigned 2012 Porsche 911 and meet some of your most/least favorite Inside Line editors. We'll be at the In-N-Out Burger in Redondo Beach at 9 PM, rain or rain.
We'll also have an 2012 Audi R8 there, plus assorted cars from the Long-Term Road Test blog. You'll be able to sit in the cars, plus talk cars with the editors and other readers, and if you're likable, we'll buy you a burger.
Details below. If you're coming, kindly RSVP to either our Inside Line or Edmunds.com Facebook invite.
The location: In-N-Out Burger, 3801 Inglewood Avenue, Redondo Beach, CA 90278-1111
Google Maps link: http://g.co/maps/5e685
(If the parking lot is full, we'll spill over into the adjacent Petco/Von's lot.)
The time: Sunday, November 20, 9 p.m. -- 10 p.m.
Last week, Edmunds.com published its 2012 buying guides which feature our top recommendations in the different car segments. Not surprisingly, a bunch of our long-termers have popped up in the top recs. And they are indeed ones that we've given props to in this here blog.
Sedans: Kia Optima (Sedans Under $25,000 -- although our Turbo SX is $30K), Volvo S60 (Under $40K -- our T5 is $41K), Hyundai Equus (Under $70K), Audi A8 (Over $70K)
SUVs: Nissan Juke (Under $25K)
Minivans: Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna
Convertible: Mazda Miata (Under $30K) oh wait...
Coupes: Fiat 500 (Under $20K), Ford Mustang (Under $30K)
Wagons: Acura TSX Sport Wagon (Under $35K)
Hybrids/Electric: Volt, Fusion Hybrid
Disagree with our top picks?
Caroline Pardilla, Deputy Managing Editor
Below are the fuel economy numbers for October 2011. We've listed the overall best, worst and average tanks. New long-termers, the Audi A8L and Acura NSX, have been added to the list.
|
Car |
Best |
Worst |
Average |
|
1991 Acura NSX |
21.2 |
20.1 |
20.7 |
|
2011 Acura TSX Sport Wagon |
32.5 |
18.9 |
24.2 |
|
2012 Audi A8L |
25.7 |
16.1 |
19.6 |
|
2012 Fiat 500 Sport |
42.4 |
25.3 |
31.1 |
|
2012 Ford Explorer XLT |
22.4 |
17.2 |
19.4 |
|
2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid |
37.7 |
24.4 |
31.6 |
|
2011 Ford Mustang GT |
22.7 |
10.7 |
16.7 |
|
2011 Honda Odyssey |
31.5 |
13.2 |
20.7 |
|
2011 Hyundai Equus |
24.6 |
11.6 |
17.6 |
|
2011 Infiniti M56 |
26.4 |
13.0 |
19.0 |
|
2012 Jeep Wrangler |
21.0 |
14.7 |
17.5 |
|
2011 Kia Optima SX Turbo |
28.5 |
12.6 |
22.1 |
|
1997 Mazda MX-5 Miata |
26.0 |
18.5 |
21.8 |
|
2011 Mazda 2 Touring |
38.7 |
21.1 |
31.9 |
|
2011 Mini Cooper Countryman |
33.6 |
16.9 |
24.9 |
|
2010 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport |
27.5 |
18.4 |
23.0 |
|
2011 Nissan Juke |
28.2 |
17.9 |
22.3 |
|
1985 Porsche 911 |
27.8 |
14.1 |
21.1 |
|
2011 Toyota Sienna |
26.3 |
13.2 |
19.4 |
|
2011 Volkswagen Jetta TDI |
46.1 |
25.5 |
35.4 |
|
2012 Volvo S60 T5 |
28.1 |
15.9 |
21.2 |
For comparison, here's the fuel update for September.
Dan Edmunds, director of vehicle testing, will put up the Volt's fuel economy numbers on a separate post later. After the jump you can see the list sorted by best average MPG. We also listed the EPA combined average.
Through a variety of circumstances, I drove the Mazda 2 to an open house at Ed Pink Racing Engines, all the way out in a remote and very disreputable corner of Van Nuys where Ed Pink began building Hemis for the best drag racers of the 1960s.
Frank Honsowetz, EPRE’s general manager, offered to liven up the Mazda 2 with one of the 360-hp, 165-cubic-inch (2.7-liter) inline-4 Toyota engines that the shop builds for racers in the USAC Midget series, but I respectfully declined.
Then he showed me one of the vintage-racing engines that EPRE rebuilds these days, and while the 800-hp, supercharged, twin-plug version of Bud Winfield and Leo Goossen’s Novi V8 tempted me for a moment just for the opportunity to hear the scream of its 10-inch, Paxton centrifugal supercharger (the tip speed of the impeller is on the order of a wildly inefficient Mach 2!), it was clear that this engine from one of Andy Granatelli's Indy cars of the 1960s would never fit into the Mazda 2.
It turns out that the best theft-deterrent you can buy for your car these days is a manual transmission.
Only about 8 percent of new cars sold in the U.S. are equipped with a manual transmission these days compared to 22 percent in 1985. And this means that fewer and fewer people each year know how to drive a car with a manual transmission.
So it makes you wonder why anyone would choose the five-speed manual transmission over the six-speed automatic for the Fiat 500. This goes double if you live in the suburb of L.A. where I do, which has hills kind of the way San Francisco has hills.
But there’s no scent of burning clutch material after driving the Fiat 500 around my town.
Really, you need a private road. You don't have to own it, but you have to be able to go there. Otherwise you might never get the whole idea of a sports car.
Sadly my private road is 300 miles away. Fortunately things have always taken me to Monterey for one reason or other since the days when the Inn at Spanish Bay was just an abandoned sand pit beside 17 Mile Drive. So when my third trip up there this summer lined up, I got the keys to the Porsche 911.
Then I made my way to Carmel Valley Road.
The odometer rolled over 120,000 miles on Interstate 5 up on top of the mountains near Pyramid Lake. We were coming back from Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the return leg of a 750-mile trip to see the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid in action at the ALMS event.
That’s 5,351.4 miles since we got the odometer working, though as Scott Oldham observed at the 119,000-mile mark, we rolled up some good miles between then and the car’s purchase in April .
We still have to do a rough-and-ready calibration of the odometer, as the speedometer is more than 5 mph optimistic at 60 mph (more like 8 mph, actually), just like all the Porsche 911s of the 1980s were. But that said, we’ve recorded an average of 20.6 mpg since June, with a best of 27.6 mpg and a worst of 14.1 mpg. Our farthest observed cruising range has been 385.6 miles. Once we get our observed odo calibration, we’ll go back and correct these numbers.
Our boys had some adventures with hand tools when they decided to swap the Black Plague’s traditional-style rear deck for the Turbo-type rear wing that originally came with the M491 Turbo Look.
We’re just switching things up with the way the car looks. And there’s some science involved with the wing that we’ll talk about later.
But imagine our boys' disappointment at the end of the transplant when they couldn’t get the rear deck to open. When they pulled the T-handle for the release cable that’s located on the B-pillar, the lid would pop ajar, but the latch hung up and the lid wouldn’t open.
This is why it’s good to have the Porsche Zenmaster on speed dial.
Every time I see the Volvo S60, I see a missed opportunity.
Surely former Volvo design director Steve Mattin meant well as the S60 was developed under his leadership, and I’m sure that he brought to bear all the great things he learned at Mercedes-Benz over the course of the 17 years he spent there as a designer.
But when I see the S60 nicely integrated into a single, smooth shape that is searching for a new styling vocabulary, it makes me think of yet another homogenized German sedan.
People walk up to us all the time to talk about the Fiat 500. There’s that cuteness thing of course. But as you can tell after a moment or two, it’s also because it’s small.
There’s no visual intimidation. It promises to be cheap. It simplifies, lightens, and makes sensible. It’s smart, not extravagant. It’s efficient, not complicated.
The car is an answer to a question about utility, but it’s also an answer to a question about psychology. And as the smartphones that we hold in our hands every day are telling us, small, cleverly integrated packages make us feel smart and clever ourselves.
Most people probably would describe the Mazda 2 as lively.
For me, it’s simply springy, bouncing up and down on its suspension like some kind of spaniel straining at its leash. It’s pretty much the opposite of the typical Kia, which usually has an overly damped suspension that packs down over a series of bumps.
One goes for liveliness, and the other goes for control. You pays your money and you takes your chances. Of course, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, and maybe that’s why the Mazda 2 just leaves me shaken but not stirred.
Obedience training, that’s what the Mazda 2 needs.
Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com @ 13,385 miles
It’s time for an accounting update of the money we’ve spent so far on the 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera M491.
How you feel about it probably depends on your thinking about used cars versus real estate.
So I've been charged with breaking in one of our new long-term rides. I know that's Donna's already got you guessing as to what they might be, but I thought I'd drop another hint.
Our Porsche guy Lee Rice replaced the bushings in the Black Plague's clutch pedal, though he spent a couple hours upside down in the footwell and got sunburn in a particularly unpleasant area to do it. It was a lot of trouble for $14 worth of plastic parts.
Afterwards Rice sent us a little note about the whole issue. It's interesting in its own right, but also it's a lesson that there's a lot more that goes into the way cars are built and subsequently evolve than we realize -- something that's especially true about the 911, which remained almost unchanged between 1964 and 1989. It's always amazing to discover what you think you know but don't. His report follows:
After all these miles, you’d think that I’d have gotten over the new size of the 5 Series.
It’s now a little big car instead of a big little car, more like a 7 Series than a 3 Series.
And I like the 7 Series. It’s far more of a driver’s car than you’d expect from something so hefty, and I’ve put in lots of miles in various iterations of this car over the years. And not just around the block, either.
Not everybody likes the big speedometer, which is so like a giant pie plate that has inexplicably found its way to the dashboard.
Out of step as usual, I really like it. There are graphic devices of all kinds strewn across the dashboard of various cars, but this one charms me because it represents a kind of friendly communication from the machinery.
Well, it can be satisfying to really take a hold of a car. That’s why some guys like a steering wheel with a thick rim that fills the palms.
But I am not among them. And there’s too much about the Kia Optima’s approach to sporting driving that amounts to no more than a kind of oversize statement.
That’s the style of performance these days. More steering effort. More suspension damping (especially more damping). More aggressive throttle action. More transmission shifting. More brake bite.
Try as I might, I can’t get exercised by the Fiat 500’s seeming lack of horsepower -- 99 hp. This might be because I once spent a summer racing a 55-hp Renault Le Car.
Of course hardly anyone could tell that I was actually racing the Le Car. It looked more like a demonstration run since it didn’t make any noise except for the squealing Kleber tires. There were a number of other Le Cars out there with me, though, and every once in a while one would roll upside down just to get people’s attention, kind of like a bad puppy.
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