Cars.com Mileage Challenge 3.2: The Results

Yesterday, we introduced the four high-mileage commuter cars for our latest mileage challenge, which comprised about 300 miles of highways southwest of Chicago. Three of the four — the Pontiac G5, Toyota Corolla and Ford Focus — had trip computers with mpg readouts; the fourth, a Honda Civic, did not. We started the drive with full tanks of gas, logged mileage on the trip computers and calculated it again by filling up at the end of the day.

The numbers are in, and the Corolla came in first at 36.4 mpg, outperforming its 27/35 mpg city/highway ratings — and it was the only car to do so. The other three posted more modest results: The Civic (25/36 mpg city/highway) achieved 34.6 mpg, the G5 (25/37) achieved 33.1 mpg and the Focus (24/35 mpg) achieved just 31.0 mpg.

Full results below.

Cars.com Mileage Challenge 3.1

Gas prices are dropping — precious good news in otherwise dismal economic times — but automakers clearly think we’re still in for a long-haul increase. To wit: The MPG war remains afoot, and the higher the gas mileage numbers you can put up, the better. General Motors markets XFE trims, for Extra Fuel Economy, of certain cars and trucks that have been tweaked to get better mileage. Ford has the makings of a similar lineup in its SFE, or Superior Fuel Economy, badging. Even Hyundai and Kia tout drivetrain revisions that yield incremental upticks in several of their ’09 models.

The ratings are sometimes impressive, especially among commuter cars, so for this fall’s mileage challenge we put four of them to the test. GM’s Chevy Cobalt and Pontiac G5 twins now get an estimated 25/37 mpg city/highway in high-efficiency XFE trim, which only comes with a manual transmission. The redesigned Toyota Corolla gets a close 27/35 mpg city/highway rating with an automatic; that’s a slight increase over the prior-gen automatic. A number of other contenders post impressive highway figures, too.

Balk all you want about how your kid brother’s ’87 Tercel got 35 mpg going uphill, but we’ll remind you that today’s commuters can reach 60 mph in less than 10 seconds – with side curtain airbags and habitable backseats to boot.

Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 5

In Cars.com’s latest Mileage Challenge, we relied mostly on each car’s onboard mileage readout, a feature integrated into the trip computer on many cars these days. Ultimately we chose to use the readouts over our own at-the-pump calculations. In our final installment, we’ve decided to look at just how those readouts work — and more specifically, how accurate they are compared to calculations made at the pump.

Experts were split: Some defended the onboard displays as significantly more accurate than at-the-pump calculations. Another said that the differences tend to even out over time, while another warned that mileage readouts have their own set of potential inaccuracies.

So what makes these things tick?

Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 4

We’ve been blogging all week about Cars.com’s latest Mileage Challenge, in which we took four hybrids through a day of Chicago traffic. Along the way we logged more than enough seat time to size up the competing drivetrains. Though different in many ways, all of them build on the same formula: a gasoline engine aided by one or more electric motors, which draw power from a high-voltage battery that’s recharged by the brakes. (Got all that? Next up: quantum physics 101.)

Read on for our thoughts.

Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Video

In the first two installments of Cars.com’s Mileage Challenge, we took you through our daylong city drive to see what sort of real-world gas mileage various hybrid cars serve up. Each hybrid in our challenge had a battery of displays to convey instant and cumulative fuel economy. Some also had power flow displays or mileage history readouts, while others had meters showing the amount of electric boost or how much braking energy was recharging the battery. That’s a lot of information, and each car had a different take on how to convey it. Naturally, some did better than others.

Check out our video to learn more.

Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 2

Yesterday, we introduced the four fuel-sippers — a Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid and Toyota Prius — we schlepped through Chicago traffic early this month. We took pains to drive as we normally would: No nursing the gas pedal to stay in electric mode or purposely coasting to regenerate more braking energy. Just ordinary stop-and-go driving. Faced with some wonky fill-up numbers at a gas pump on the fritz, we took our results from each vehicle’s onboard mileage readout, which we reset at the beginning of each new leg. Read below for the numbers, along with some postgame analysis.

Cars.com Hybrid Mileage Challenge: Part 1

It’s official: At $4.20 a gallon in some areas, gas costs more than a cup of the fancy stuff at Starbucks. That's why Cars.com has revisited its ongoing look at the real-world gas mileage today’s cars are getting. In our last mileage challenge, we took an SUV, a minivan and two sedans on a highway trip around Illinois and Wisconsin, and we concluded that the cars’ EPA highway ratings were easy to achieve. This time around, we wrangled four hybrids — two SUVs, one sedan and one hatchback — and their renowned ability to return extraordinary city mileage numbers to see if they could handle everything Chicago could throw at them.

The Second City certainly obliged. You might call it the route from pothole hell: Drive north 140-plus blocks, east eight blocks, south 115 blocks. Repeat. All told, we spent more than nine hours behind the wheel — 12 hours if you count stops for lunch and Mother Nature — and, thanks to a Cubs game and enough rush-hour traffic to discourage even the Californians among us, we averaged speeds of only about 20 mph.

Details on the cars below.

The Cars.com Mileage Challenge: Part 3

We drove a Nissan Rogue, Subaru WRX, Dodge Grand Caravan and Hyundai Sonata from Chicago to Madison, Wis., and back to see what sort of real-world gas mileage we’d get. (Check out the introduction here and the results here.) We matched — or bettered — the EPA’s highway mileage estimates, which reflect stricter standards for 2008, without too much trouble. After crunching the numbers, we observed a few other trends, too:

• Sporty cars encourage you to drive hard, but that doesn’t mean your mileage will necessarily tank. The WRX brought out the aggressive driver in many of us. When you’ve been driving an SUV, minivan or family car with an automatic transmission, switching to a turbocharged sedan with a stick shift has a certain je ne sais quoi. Ah, who are we kidding — the quoi is pretty obvious. Needless to say, the WRX tempted us to drive a bit harder, but at the end of the day, our observed 24.9 mpg (based on the refill) exceeded its 16/23 rating. A pleasant surprise: The mileage ratings appear to leave room for a bit of fun behind the wheel.

The 2008 Cars.com Mileage Challenge: Part 2

Yesterday, we detailed our scheme to document the real-world mileage of four 2008 models — a Nissan Rogue, Subaru Impreza, Dodge Grand Caravan and Hyundai Sonata. All the cars except the Rogue had trip computers with mileage readouts, so we were able to easily track our mileage along the way. The results are in:

The 2008 Cars.com Mileage Challenge

As the price for a gallon of regular gas hovers above $3 a gallon — $3.40 in California — it’s high time we investigate what sort of mileage our cars achieve in the real world. In October, the EPA released its 2008 Fuel Economy Guide, which rates mileage using stricter standards for acceleration, air-conditioning use, cold weather and top speeds than were used in the past. The new measures purportedly reflect real-world driving better than before; MPG ratings dropped some 5 to 15 percent per car using the new standards.

Still, the EPA tests are done in laboratories, not on the road. To test real-world mileage, we took four cars across interstates and rural roads between Chicago and Madison, Wis., in October. Nine hours, two pit stops and one greasy lunch later, we had logged some 300 miles.