Concerned over actual vs quoted mpg's

[MUDDY]

Hi folks,

Apologies in advance for the long post but it requires some history.

Several years ago my wife and I purchased a derelict old cottage in the sticks which we have now fully renovated. At the same time we purchased a pickup truck (Mazda B2500 4x4) to use as our sole family vehicle (we also have 3 kids) so we opted for a double cab which gave a good compromise between load lugging building materials and practical family motoring. During the first two years it averaged a poor 28mpg but then was used almost daily for load carrying on short trips to builders yards etc. Now the cottage is completed and the truck is now used basically as a family car it now averages 36mpg. I also do a twice weekly 250mile commute to my head office and the truck averages 42mpg on the near 100% motorway journey.

Our problem is that we now need two vehicles and with the soaring price of fuel we want to aim for smaller more economical vehicles with 70+mpg if possible in motorway use.

We have looked at three serious contenders, the mini one diesel, the VW Polo and the Skoda fabia. All three were deemed to small for two adults plus two young children in seats plus the large buggy and shopping etc. However, while in the skoda showroom we saw and fell in love with the Roomster. It is cavernous inside and suits our needs perfectly. We are looking to buy a Roomster initially and then also a Fabia greenline when available.

On paper the 1.9 diesel roomster should achieve 68mpg which is perfectly acceptable but I have never seen a review where either the 1.9 or the 1.4 achieve anywhere near this which worries me as the prime reason for changing vehicles is to considerably cut our fuel costs. (We do 30K miles per year)

The truck is now fully paid for, has cheap insurance (£350/year fully comp) and only costs about £150 a year to maintain as I do the services myself. The tax is also low as it runs under a LCV tax band. With careful driving the last set of tyres lasted me 97K miles and the front pads 67K miles. I can only really justify financially switching vehicles if the roomster can actually achieve 70mpg'ish despite my wife and I both wanting it for other reasons.

We have booked a long test drive of a roomster but sadly it is the 1.4 which is not going to be practical for us as we will need to carry loads occasionally. Can anybody on this forum confirm that with careful motorway driving at 56mph (the speed I cruise at in the truck) what the 1.9 diesel will actually achieve?

I would very much appreciate your assistance.

Ian

[Babs]

you'd be VERY lucky to get a true 70mpg in one!

[Dr Zoidberg]

But if they really do cruise at 56mph then there's no reason why they shouldn't be on the happy side of 60MPG on the motorway

[ap0gee]

Originally Posted by Babs

you'd be VERY lucky to get a true 70mpg in one!

You'd be very lucky to get a true 70mpg in ANYTHING - don't forget the mpg figures are assessed on a rolling road, so don't take into account wind resistance, gradient, load, etc. On a lighter note, 60mpg ought to be possible if you are fanatical about driving efficiently as Dr Z says, and so over 10,000 miles this'll only equate to an extra 24 gallons of fuel, or just over 1p per mile at current prices...

[MUDDY]

I do a steady 56mph on the inside lane with the lorries. I leave at 4:30am from North Lincolnshire and arrive at my head office near coventry at between 7 - 7:30am'ish depending on traffic (usually very little at the time of the morning). Almost 100% motorway - M180, M18, M1 and M42. I barely have to make more than a dozen or so gear changes.

I used to do 70mph but the heavy fuel consumption was taking its toll on family finances and to be honest I'd take just as long to get there because I was leaving later and hitting traffic jams. Leaving earlier and going slower results in me arriving well on time, less stressed and saving me a fortune in fuel costs

I forget to say, I'm only bothered about achieving close to 70mpg when on motorway with just a single occupant - me. I do the vast majority of our mileage on my commute to work on motorway. I don't mind if the mpg is low around town or when fully loaded as that now represents less than 20% of our annual mileage.

edit: Because I've bettered the governments official figures in most of my previous vehicles I hoped that the 68mpg was achievable. Mind you my vehicles have all been large and the official test seems biased towards small engined, small cars so this may explain my better figures? Our overall average (mixed driving) of 36mpg is 7mpg higher than the government offical figure for my truck.

edit2: I don't agree that 70mpg is an unreasonable expectation. A friend achieves 74mpg from his fiat punto regularly but we dicounted both the panda and punto due to the fact he also regularly achieves mechanical faults......... a roomster is 500kg lighter, more aerodynamic and runs on tyres half the width of the truck and of less rolling resistance and we have achieved highs of 48mpg in this truck on empty motorway. I guess the only answer is to find a dealer with a 1.9 roomster that I can loan for long enough to simulate my actual driving and calculate the actual mpg that way - not sure if the dealers are going to be too happy about me putting 250+ miles on their car though?

[Dr Zoidberg]

Well the official figures on both of my octavias have certainly been achievable.

I could get my Mk1 into the 60s and that's without sticking to 56mph as a matter of principle

[Decron]

Short answer is no.

Despite what you see on paper you will only (!) get about 48-50mpg average

[cvennall]

Over 13000 miles in our 1.9 3, we have averaged just over 50mpg. My commute a 15 mile dash on country A roads - I don't hang about and get 50mpg going in to work, 45ish coming home (but then it is uphill on the way back). If you are serious about saving fuel, then a steady 56 on a motorway should see you in the upper 50's. As an aside, on long runs I reckon I get better mpg driving the car rather than using the cruise control. It all depends on how you drive/accelerate. Also, I reckon that mpg falls at this time of the year because we are running headlights and wipers much of the time.
Back to the original proposition of 60+ mpg, I think it will be hard to achieve in the roomster, if you really want good mpg then my Furby vrs regularly beats the roomster without trying and goes faster too!

[Decron]

Originally Posted by cvennall

Back to the original proposition of 60+ mpg, I think it will be hard to achieve in the roomster, if you really want good mpg then my Furby vrs regularly beats the roomster without trying and goes faster too!

Hmmm. I have had completely the opposite experiance with the fuel economy.

[MUDDY]

Originally Posted by cvennall

Also, I reckon that mpg falls at this time of the year because we are running headlights and wipers much of the time.

Thanks cvennall.

I have also found winter driving nets worse mpg despite doing the exact same journey, in near identical traffic conditions with the same vehicle. I also think having the lights on etc is part of the problem as well as the winter DERV not giving quite the kick that summer DERV does. Because my driving is done between 4:30am - 7am and then 6pm - 9pm in winter is entirely in the dark and requires lights etc. In summer I get most of this done without using lights and generally see 2-3mpg better.

After reading both this post and also other posts on mpg within this site I'm now quite concerned that it will actually cost us more to switch to a smaller car than to stick with the large. If you consider the truck is paid for and gets 36mpg overall average, I reckon on 25K miles a year our replacement fabia or roomster would have to achieve 60mpg+ to just cancel out the 10K of finance I would then need to take out. It gets even worse if you consider that stripped of everything unnecessary (child seats, tailgates etc) and driven in summer the truck can hit 48mpg+ on the motorway.

It is a close call for us financially. Of course other things come into play such as rapidly increasing fuel costs. The latest prediction I've heard is £1.25 per litre by this time next year, at which point the roomster then starts to gain an advantage.

[Babs]

My Fabia vRS has averaged 42mpg the last 9 months, so you can discount that really...

if you *really* want nearly 70mpg, try getting a VW Lupo 3L imported, or go to VW and buy a Polo bluemotion

also, perhaps you can outweigh the extra financial costs by not driving an age-old truck everywhere, and the extra enjoyment/safety/comfort can bring you more than mere pounds and pence

[MUDDY]

Originally Posted by Babs

also, perhaps you can outweigh the extra financial costs by not driving an age-old truck everywhere, and the extra enjoyment/safety/comfort can bring you more than mere pounds and pence

LOL, Babs, if only we had the money to do just that! - I'd be choosing an Octavia scout

In everything other than fuel costs the truck out performs most for practicality and driving enjoyment for its cost - it happily carried the whole family over any terrain in all weathers while carrying tons of building materials for our cottage and when unladen we could do impressive tailslides on any roundabout with only the slightest provocation..........

....it also proved safe enough when a Cadbury van drove right up our back end at speed while we were stationary on a roundabout, burying himself 4 feet into the back end while all the family where on board. Thankfully we had 6 feet of pickup bed and tube bumpers behind the babies so he never intruded into the cabin - had we been in a lupo I dread to think what would have happened - even worse if we'd been in a SMART!

Anyway, we've booked a long test drive of a Roomster the week after next so I'll be interested to see what economy I can squeeze from it as I'm an old git and less lead footed than I used to be

[Dr Zoidberg]

Well , just to add a bit more to this.
Earlier in the week I drove from Stourbridge , via Redditch , to Hull in my octavia 2.0TDI - 175 miles each way.

Much of the journey was done with cruise control on at an indicated 78mph , though there was about 10 miles through 50mph roadworks and a few bits somewhere in between.

By the time I got to Hull city centre I was on 61mpg (this then dropped to 57 once I'd crawled through traffic for half an hour)
I have absolutely no doubt that if I'd done the whole journey at 56mph I'd have been showing 70mpg.

A roomster is less aerodynamic , but has the slightly smaller more economical engine so for the long slow motorway runs I think you will be getting close to your target.

[robmawer]

Originally Posted by MUDDY

Thankfully we had 6 feet of pickup bed and tube bumpers behind the babies so he never intruded into the cabin - had we been in a lupo I dread to think what would have happened - even worse if we'd been in a SMART!

smarts are remarkably strong vehicles - it's basically a thick steel cage with plastic panels bolted on it and a wheel on each corner...in the event of a collision there is little instrusion into the cabin. This was demonstrated on 5th Gear not so long ago when they drove one into a concrete barrier at 70mph - both doors on the car could still be opened after the crash...the summation of the crash was that the car would protect its occupants sufficiently, but the rate of deceleration from 70-0 would've probably killed them.

Also, if you can track down a smart ForTwo CDI then you will easily see 70mpg+.


Rob.

[MUDDY]

Originally Posted by robmawer

but the rate of deceleration from 70-0 would've probably killed them. Rob.

LOL

or in our case, the SMART might have more simply been pushed onto the roundabout into the path of the oncoming HGV rather than absorbing the impact while staying stationary....

[cvennall]

Back to the original debate - had a run into Edinburgh this morning - had to take it easy ços the temp was only just above freezing and the roads were quite slippery. By the time we got into the centre of town and parked, the mpg reading was 58mpg. This was over about 25 miles of city and country driving, so, on a motorway, at constant speed then maybe your target of over 60mpg will be achievable.

As for my furby doing better than a roomie, on a like for like run, it does do better. But when necessary, it does do a lot worse, but overall, from the dash readout, the furbie is 2 mpg better than the roomie (52 versus 50mpg). Granted, I tend to keep the furby in the garage through the week and use it for longer trips at the weekend, so its not a true comparison overall.

[alickswud]

i regularly ave 56/57 on longish runs in my 1.9 roomster3 with a passenger some luggage and a newf (and he's 13 stone)in the back, this is using the cruise control as much as possible at around the legal limit. i can regularly get into the 60's if i try!

[pete.mcl]

I'm currently running a 1.9TDi Roomster scout, and the main thing you will find is that with the 1.9TDi engine you will have to do 4-5000 miles before you start to see the clamied fuel consumption figues. I have just rolled over the 2000 miles mark and its gone from 42-45mpg (on a 20mile motorway/a-road/traffic run) when new, to the 50-52mpg on the same journey. I probably average about 65-70 on the motorway and see instantanious figures of 60-65 mpg.
Your 70mpg target is not unreasonable, but just dont expect it from the 1st mile...

[woodenspatulas]

ive got a roomster scout 1.9tdi but i dont really drive in a "ecomonical" way. buy a regularly get well over 40mpg, on the instant MPG on the motorway i see a pretty constant 60+MPG.

the SWMBO has been using a golf mk4 1.9tdi 100bhp and thats been getting 65+MPG on the motorway at 50ish MPH.

i dont think you'd be far off your target. the other thing to consider is maybe a fabia estate? might be better as far as wind resisitance goes and still very usable for any task!

[cheezemonkhai]

If you can afford a mini 1 it might be worth looking at a 118d if you don't mind RWD. That actually does get very close to it's official figures and the 2008 MY version is tax band B (£35 per year).

It's also pretty fun to drive and I think you should be able to get kiddy luggage in the boot.

I think the older 1.9's could easily get 60+ if driven carefully, but a seat altea I had with a PD105 in it recently struggled to get out of the 40's on average fuel economy and i was driving that at about 65mph down the m/ways most the time with no real load. On the basis of that i'm not so sure the 1.9 is that great any more and I'd be wanting to get a 24hour+ test drive from a dealer to try it yourself.