Don’t forget that diesels have the benefit from the absence of a throttle (as do some recent BMW gas engines).

* 0.7 to 1.1 – typical values for a Formula 1 car (downforce settings change for each circuit)
* 0.35 – Dodge Viper GTS )
* 0.45 – Dodge Viper RT/10
* 0.42 – Lamborghini Countach, 1974
* 0.38 – Volkswagen Beetle
* 0.38 – Mazda Miata, 1989
* 0.372 – Ferrari F50, 1996
* 0.36 – Ferrari Testarossa, 1986
* 0.35 – Scion xB, 2004+
* 0.32 – McLaren F1, 1992
* 0.310 – Lamborghini Diablo, 1990-2001
* 0.29 – Porsche 997 GT3, 2006
* 0.27 – Honda Civic Hybrid, 2006
* 0.26 – Toyota Prius, 2004 – 2007
* 0.25 – Honda Insight, 1999
* 0.117 – Summers Brothers Goldenrod Bonneville race car, 1965

BTW, if I had a dollar for every time a person that I was teaching to drive stick would burn, drop, or otherwise abuse the clutch in gears other than first, I’d be rich. Instead, I have a nice annual clutch replacement bill :)

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As for gas gauges, many people do watch them. I had one in my Subaru, at first I paid no attention to it and got 12-15 mpg. Then came the gas crunch of 2005, and after spending 3 days on a bicycle because the whole town (!!!) had no premium gas, I noticed that this little neat display was showing me good things. A month later, I could get 20mpg while still doing 3 second 0-45 runs on every stoplight.

If for every 10 cars sold, two would get a 5mpg improvement, that’s 1 extra MPG overall. Add tire pressure monitors with an alarm, and you have another MPG (deflated tires kill mileage big time).

That’s 2MPG for MAYBE $100 a car – pays for itself in the first year of ownership. Best bang for the buck.

While we’re talking about potentially distracting gauges, it would be neat to have a stopping-distance-to-zero gauge in addition to a speedo. And if you had the proximity sensors of the new generation of adaptive cruise control, you could have a second needle on the same dial that told you how close you were to hitting something. Might not be useful, but it might be kinda fun.

Careful, some here will retort that a Prius is a fairly large car, and that they are loaded with things like Navigation, neato computers, and other doo-dads that a ‘basic car’ would lack.

I’m just sayin’

In an effort to justify their rather large monthly payment for such a small, basic car :)

Thank-you.

The only time these two are different are before the torque converter locks up. And unless you’re driving a Diesel pickup where the computer locks and unlocks the torque converter to give you 1/2 steps in your gears, the torque converter is generally unlocked below 35mph and locked above. It wouldn’t be too useful of a gauge. You could just have an idiot light in there that told you when the torque converter was locked.

If you’re driving a stick and have this gauge, those needles better be in the same position all the time or you’re doing serious damage to your clutch.

My 2.3L turbo-charged four (225HP, 258 lb-ft @ 1900-5000 rpm) gets right at 30MPG. That figure was determined after filling it up with 17 gallons +/- after 517 miles, not based on the computer, which read about 32 MPG. Longest single tank was right at 525, but I don’t make a habit of running it dry.

I think the gauges are nice, but, as another poster mentions, only the most observant of drivers will change their driving habits. Those persnickety drivers are probably the ones who already are careful about their driving anyway.

Happy driving.

full throttle acceleration to 80mph
stomp on brakes
repeat several times
write down fuel economy on slip of paper
toss slip of paper in wastebasket
return to automotive enjoyment

Seriously, one of the things that impresses me is how far my car goes on coast down with clutch disengaged. The tires are at 37/44psi front/rear per spec. Let one go down 5psi and it does matter to handling. Why aren’t more cars equipped with relatively high pressure tires? Can’t active suspension firmware compensate for the harsh ride?

Oscilograph-type digital graph would be best, but I bet it would cost more.

Still, even a digital display is better than nothing.

I’ve seen those gauges, and they’re neat but I don’t think all but the most observant people are going to use that to save fuel. I agree with the original poster who said it would be a good idea to have real time fuel mileage gauges because it would make people save fuel. But the key is they need to be much more real time than the DCX updates every second. I test drove a BMW 32? a couple of years ago and it had a neat real time mileage gauge. It was an analog dial just like the speedometer. When you stepped on the gas the needle would dive towards 0. That’s the kind of feed back people really need to save fuel. The kind that updates every couple of seconds doesn’t really give you the feedback you need to know to stay off the gas.

It would be a real cheap and easy gauge to add too. I’m working on a homemade version for my ‘89 4runner (pre obd-ii where all the data is easy to get). All I’m doing is taking a reading from the ECU every time it pulses the injectors. By knowing the pulsewidth of the injector and the vehicle speed, a simple analog circuit can make a voltage proportional to your fuel mileage and then that goes to a simple gauge to display the mileage. It’s a very high bandwidth measurement – it will update every injector pulse which is once every two engine revolutions. So you get near real time output. If a complete hack like me can do it, it’s trivial for car companies to do it too.

Still, I suggest anyone who is tracking mileage also do a cost of ownership study. I think kbb.com still has this info on their site. Recalculate based on your mileage, and realize that if you raise the mileage, you are also increasing depreciation.

My calculations showed me that even with $5 a gallon gas, I was better off keeping my land cruiser than trading for a new sub compact. (While a ten year old ‘crusher is still a nice ride, a ten year old subcompact is generally a heap.)

Here is the real kicker – IT IS THE GOVERNMENT’S FAULT.

Buying a new car means tons of taxes, and, in Colorado, ownership taxes. Tax expenses on a new $20,000 car is more than the entire fuel bill for the first three years!

After they wore down, I did end up replacing the stock Goodyear Integra’s with Michelin Hydroedge’s, because they give better rain handling. I think I did sacrifice 2 to 3 MPG for this decision.

The other thing this does not address is how fuel mileage of vehicles varies with age in the real world.
Anecdotal, but I usually kept a GM pickup truck and a little Japaneses car around. When they were new the PU more or less got the fuel mileage it was supposed to and the cars got better in the city and the same or a little worse on the highway.

As they aged the PU’s lost significant fuel mileage relatively rapidly, ie after a year or two it started to get significantly worse and it had nothing to do with the state of tune and they still passed emissions with perfect readings. One has to conclude that it was general wear and tear and the auto gearboxes.

This never happened with the small Japaneses cars even after much longer use, so from a sampling of 20 or so vehicles one has to conclude it either is due to the auto gearboxes or it is characteristic of US made vehicles (also noticed the same on two US made cars owned a long time ago).

I like your observation and agree it couldn’t cost much. I am currently driving (but don’t own)a 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix GXP that has a real-time fuel economy function. By watching the readout you will ‘learn’ what behaviors are rewarded by the best numbers. I am averaging over 24mpg in mixed driving (almost 29 pure freeway) from the 300+ hp 5.3L V8 from what I learned from the Driver Information Center (DIC).

Yeah…I know – what the hell is wrong with me, huh?