What mpg is classed pricey???

[Engineer1]

But day to day depreciation is academic I may well be loosing £5 a day on my car but that is £5 a day of the cash I have already spent that isn't coming back to me.

[AlpineWhite]

Engineer1 said:

But day to day depreciation is academic I may well be loosing £5 a day on my car but that is £5 a day of the cash I have already spent that isn't coming back to me.

Agreed, mostly. When I was last deciding what car to go for, I added together all the costs involved in running the cars I fancied over the length of time I was planning to keep them. This included the purchase cost. I then subtracted the likely value of the car at the end of the chosen period (well, an educated guess). For me it was better to spend a bit more and get a newer diesel, even taking extra depreciation (its got more to lose) into account over older, cheaper petrols.

[DannyVTS]

has anyone said smiles per gallon > miles per gallon yet?

[Engineer1]

Realisticley pricey is when you resent the money you are spending on a journey.

[swamp]

I'd say that 35mpg is probably the minimum boundary right now for petrol. VAG 2.0 TFSI now can achieve 38+mpg, BMW *30i can achieve similar with a 6 pot naturally aspirated engine, and Mercedes have recently announced 40mpg for their six cylinder petrol on their face lift C class estate.

For diesel I'd say 50mpg should be the expected norm. If BMW can get 50.4mpg from the new X3 with 8.2s 0-62mph, then most 'normal' diesel cars should equal or do better than this.

Edited by swamp on Sunday 9th January 23:01

[Matt UK]

rsv gone! said:

Engineer1 said:

Matt UK said:

Remember that mpg is only part of the group of expenses involved in running a car.

Sometimes, mpg is not even the biggest cost...

I can stretch a service interval, I can't move a destination closer so it depends on if you are prepared to be a little hard on your car and miss a service.
So mpg is the least easy to adjust.

But on anything more valuable than a shed, depreciation is usually the biggest cost. It is often not worth changing to that newer, more expensive diesel when you factor depreciation in.

^^^ The point I was making

[shuvitupya]

A Corsa will only give you 31MPG if you drive it the same way as an E46.

Just as a diesel will only get you 50MPG if you don't exceed the speed limits, and it's a 1.6HDi.

[2 Wycked]

shuvitupya said:

Just as a diesel will only get you 50MPG if you don't exceed the speed limits, and it's a 1.6HDi.

Except that that's not true. My Vento TDI consistently averaged 59mpg and I did not drive it with achieving decent fuel economy in mind; on the one tank of fuel that I did it achieved an average of 63mpg.

[rsv gone!]

Matt UK said:

rsv gone! said:

Engineer1 said:

Matt UK said:

Remember that mpg is only part of the group of expenses involved in running a car.

Sometimes, mpg is not even the biggest cost...

I can stretch a service interval, I can't move a destination closer so it depends on if you are prepared to be a little hard on your car and miss a service.
So mpg is the least easy to adjust.

But on anything more valuable than a shed, depreciation is usually the biggest cost. It is often not worth changing to that newer, more expensive diesel when you factor depreciation in.

^^^ The point I was making

I realised that.

[jbi]

it doesn't matter what you drive these days... it's all pricey

running a 1 litre sh!tbox costs the same as running a v8 a few years ago

Edited by jbi on Monday 10th January 07:37

[1bhp]

i can get 25mpg around town in my 2.3 turbo hot aero saab, my wifes 1.8 zetec gets around 28-29 i would notice praticly no diffrence in cost if i was to use the zetec!

[Ozzie Osmond]

It's virtually impossible to save money by buying a new car.

• Say 10,000 miles a year at 31 mpg = 322 gallons of petrol at £5.80 a gallon. £1,850 fuel bill.

If you buy an ultra-economy car you might eek out 62 mpg

• Say 10,000 miles a year at 62 mpg = 161 gallons of petrol at £5.80 a gallon. £925 fuel bill.

Whether you look at the £925 saving for 1,2 or 3 years it's hard to justify selling a car you know (and like) and taking a mechanical chance on a "new" one (which you almost certainly won't like).

[R26Andy]

Its all about perspective as well as affordability,

Coming from a Rx8 which done 17MPG to a z4c which does 27MPG I feel like a tree hugging hypermiler now lol.

[anonymous-user]

My e46 323 gets 31mpg on the motorway... thats cheap for me.

Around town I get around 20mpg... that I consider pricey

[Garett]

I find this quite useful for weighing up the costs of running my car, but you can only really guess at what a new car will cost in terms of servicing and maintencane, so its an estimation really.

Even so if I change my current Saab 9K to a VW Passat TeDIous, I'll be saving ~£1300 a year which is quite a significant amount to me.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/cost-of-your-car-calc...

Oh and in answer to your original question OP, to me about 30 MPG is where I think anything lower is bad, higher is fair to good.

Edited by Garett on Tuesday 11th January 14:54

[Guvernator]

Anything under 17-18mpg I would consider to be quite thirsty. None of the cars I have owned has really done over 25mpg though. If I ever owned a car which did 30mpg plus and still gave me the performance I desired, I think I'd be pretty chuffed.

[waterwonder]

IMO broadly speaking:

50mpg+ = Very economical
40-50MPG = Normal for a diesel
30-40MPG = Normal for a Petrol
20-30MPG = Entry level sports car, Hot hatch, S2000 350Z that kind of thing.
10-20MPG = Serious performance car. M5, Porsche, etc etc.
0-10MPG = V8 in the QE2 or V12 Jag XJS - serious gas guzzler.

So is suppose what you consider pricey is entirely dependant on your perspective. I would imagine most PHer cars or cars they aspire to are in the 0-30 range. So whilst Joe Bloggs, money saving expert extraordinaire might think anything worse than 40mpg is pricey, many on here would disagree.

Coming to end of a period in a Focus ST my comfort zone is 25-30mpg range.

[T180985]

mp3manager said:

1bhp said:

i can get 25mpg around town in my 2.3 turbo hot aero saab, my wifes 1.8 zetec gets around 28-29 i would notice praticly no diffrence in cost if i was to use the zetec!

Educate me....how does one 'use the zetec!'

You get out of the Saab and into the ford?

[mp3manager]

Ahh...I thought it was like using the force.

• Damn posting got screwed up somewhere.

[Bhuvsta]

mp3manager said:

1bhp said:

i can get 25mpg around town in my 2.3 turbo hot aero saab, my wifes 1.8 zetec gets around 28-29 i would notice praticly no diffrence in cost if i was to use the zetec!

Educate me....how does one 'use the zetec!'

Upside down ofcourse!

Edited by Bhuvsta on Tuesday 11th January 21:06