[Skyflite]

Went to visit my daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids near Austin, Texas last week. Other than the traffic around Dallas (the worst traffic I've EVER seen) it was a great trip. One of the great things was my little 'ol 2002 Sable GS averaged over 28 mpg! Love that car, 124,000 miles and all!

[SHO-WGN]

So what is that in real numbers? My apologies, I could not resist. When I post my gas mileage, I use the metric equivalent for two reasons. First our "gallon" (Canadian Imperial gallon) is larger than the US version, so we can always get more "miles per gallon" than you can. The second reason is miles per gallon actually lies. A ten mpg improvement from say 10 mpg to 20 mpg is a far better improvement than the same 10 mpg improvement from 20 mpg to 30 mpg.

So your 28+ mpg (US) is equivalent to 33.5+ mpg (Canadian/Imperial) which is equivalent to 8.4 L/100 km. No matter how you compute it, that is pretty good. My only question, was this on regular, or did you use premium?

As another Sexagenarian (no that does not describe wishful thinking; well maybe it does for me) or someone who has been on this planet for over six decades, welcome. The young'uns are concerned about school, work and girlfriends. We do have the benefit of age and experience. We grew up when gasoline cost twenty-five cents per gallon and cars lasted (if you were lucky) 100,000 miles. Today, gas is well over an order of magnitude more expensive, but our cars easily go double to triple the distance. So please feel free to share your life experience.

[Skyflite]

SHO-WGN, on 14 January 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

So what is that in real numbers? My apologies, I could not resist. When I post my gas mileage, I use the metric equivalent for two reasons. First our "gallon" (Canadian Imperial gallon) is larger than the US version, so we can always get more "miles per gallon" than you can. The second reason is miles per gallon actually lies. A ten mpg improvement from say 10 mpg to 20 mpg is a far better improvement than the same 10 mpg improvement from 20 mpg to 30 mpg.

So your 28+ mpg (US) is equivalent to 33.5+ mpg (Canadian/Imperial) which is equivalent to 8.4 L/100 km. No matter how you compute it, that is pretty good. My only question, was this on regular, or did you use premium?

As another Sexagenarian (no that does not describe wishful thinking; well maybe it does for me) or someone who has been on this planet for over six decades, welcome. The young'uns are concerned about school, work and girlfriends. We do have the benefit of age and experience. We grew up when gasoline cost twenty-five cents per gallon and cars lasted (if you were lucky) 100,000 miles. Today, gas is well over an order of magnitude more expensive, but our cars easily go double to triple the distance. So please feel free to share your life experience.

Well SHO-WGN that was on regular unleaded fuel and since I'll see my 61st. birthday next month I can also remember when gas was 25 cents per gallon. I can remember when it went up to 35 cents per gallon my daddy almost went through the roof! My very first car was a used 1960 Chevy Impala with a 283 V/8 and a Powerglide auto transmission. From what I can remember it sipped fuel pretty miserly and being only 17-years-old at the time with limited funds that was a good thing!

[SHO-WGN]

The first car I ever drove was a 1951 Chev, three on the tree and nothing else (that was a time when "loaded" meant automatic and power steering/brakes.) I do remember the steering though; you could move the wheel through a 90 degree arc and the car still went straight. I tuned that car once a month (it burned points faster than anything else.) Today, a car is barely broken in when those fifties cars were on their last legs.

However, the fact you got the mileage you did on regular is even more impressive. As an experiment, on your next road trip, fill the tank with premium and drive the car exactly as you always did, and report the mileage. For me it was a serendipitous event (the north side Chicago filling station was out of regular and mid-grade, and so was selling premium for the price of regular.) The Taurus made it to Niagara Falls on that tank, nearly 800 km (or just under 500 miles). So I repeated the experiment. Each time I used premium, I got way better mileage than on regular, with only one exception. Tip: make sure the premium contains NO alcohol (methanol or ethanol). Shell was my brand of choice. That exception: a tank of super premium, 10% ethanol blend from PetroCan in Canada.

[steveg1988]

my 2003 went about 70 mi on 1/8 of a tank. I did not do it from full so i have yet to get a accurate MPG so 28-30 is expected for my 70mph trip up the NJTP

[Vash]

i have gotten as much as 29mpg and as low as 11mpg out of my sable. i average about 20mpg in winter and about 23-24mpg in summer i would say thats about 70-80% highway and a heavy foot. my dad has gotten over 30mpg many times in his 97 vulcan.