A fast & fun eco cruiser - A paradox?
- Thread starter NVP
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Soldato
[TW]Fox;30154478 said:Why bother with any of these if you want a big cruiser and the same engine is available in a 5 or 6 - which it is?
Agreed, however in the bigger cars you'll not get the same fuel efficiency, which appears to be one of the OP's key criteria, hence I thought it worth a mention in case he's willing to go down in vehicle size to avoid an engine compromise.
Soldato
My average over 43k miles is 34.3mpg. I frequently see in excess of 40mpg on a long run.
Soldato
With respect a Skoda Octavia 4cyl is not exactly in the same league as the diesels being discussed in this thread. One of the diesels mentioned has not far short of 400hp
Yea I guess not. I just figured the diesels even with superior performance could achieve over 40mpg. OP didnt really specify that he wanted a car as powerful as that though and tbh I wouldn't even be considering 400hp if economy on a 100mile round trip is what I want
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
They can. Mine is considerably quicker than an Octavia and easily hits 50mpg. A 535d is quicker again and barely any thirstier.
Soldato
[TW]Fox;30155214 said:
There you go then. What are the specs of your car?
[TW]Fox;30155240 said:
For a petrol option although I am first to admit it won't be as engaging as a BMW is the Lexus GS450h. 350bhp, 0-60 in 5.5 and 155mph. I can get mine to about 50mpg on a good run sticking to the speed limits and my weekly average on my 90 mile a day commute is about 43mpg.
Permabanned
You do a lot better than everyone else on fuelly.
Mines 25mpg after 3.5k miles. Though thats a 340i but similar enough.
Guess it depends what sort of driving you are doing.
[TW]Fox;30155240 said:
0-60 is a very narrow definition for 'considerably quicker' particularly when comparing fwd and rwd cars.
Looking at power to weight:
Octavia vRS 220bhp 1350kg = 163bhp/ton
BMW 530i 268bhp 1710kg = 157bhp/ton
That looks lot more like comparable performance, before you take into account the benefits of lower weight.
Soldato
Alpina? Not sure if newer ones have suspension upgrades etc but something to look into
I think they should stop showing the 0-60 times with the much more powerful engines available these days in so many cars and change to something like 0-100mph
Most important times are the ones when the car already moving IE 50 to 70mph
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It's he gearboxes and features like launch control, not the power, which make them look much quicker than they sort of actually are. The 0-60 times are not lies though, we just need to understand as "car guys" to combine the 0-60 with the gearbox tech, or to be honest just disregard it. You can easily tell how fast a car will be from the product of its power and mass...
Caporegime
That's not entirely true. My 328i did 0 to 60 in a measured 5.7 seconds. There are others online who show it at as little as 5.4.
That's about a second faster than the much lighter and very slightly more powerful focus st which is recored as around 6.5s.
It is also the only routinely published performance measure by manufacturers so there isn't much else for comparison.
It wasn't what I was thinking of abyway, however he thrn asked for the 'stats'. Fortunately I've driven a vRS which also helps me to form an opinion on performance.
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Gearbox tech is a fairly important part of how quickly a car accelerates, though!
It's a flawed measure for sure but it's still generally useful and gives you a good idea. Any car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds is 'very very quick' and any car that takes 12 is dog slow.
[TW]Fox;30155240 said:
Is it simply the older engine in the e65 730d (lci) that's giving me poor mpg or is it my driving style? Are say the newer 640d engines (sorry, I don't know engine model numbers) much more efficient?
This is one thing I'm curious about, upgrading to a newer car but still achieving around the same mpg.