Smallest cars 'worse for fuel economy'

fmcg_scribe

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/11146868/Smallest-cars-worse-for-fuel-economy.html

bear1

fmcg_scribe wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/11146868/Smallest-cars-worse-for-fuel-economy.html

Well, I thought it was quite obvious? A small engined car especially N/A will drink more as you need to accelerate and change gear much more than a bigger engined car.

JohnBoy26

bear1 wrote: »

Well, I thought it was quite obvious? A small engined car especially N/A will drink more as you need to accelerate and change gear much more than a bigger engined car.
My parents' 1.5 Almera (a ****e car to begin with) does about half the total KM as their 1.9 diesel Punto and the Punto is 5 years older than the Almera.

Yeah but your comparing petrol with diesel there, hardly a fair argument Imo. The diesel will always win out, especially against a car that is known to be not all that economical.

Toyotafanboi

so much wrong with the article i don't know where to begin.

generalising all engines between 1.0 and 2.0 and not even differentiating between aspiration or fuel type is never going to give a result worth discussing is it.

fmcg_scribe

Indeed. It could be argued that the emphasis on CO2 emissions is skewing things too much because it's forcing volume car makers to move to smaller engines and some of them add turbo chargers to compensate for the reduced cc/number of cylinders. In my experience, turbo charging a petrol car does not help with fuel economy - but the acceleration is great.

seagull

We have an i10 and a zafira. The i10 is better for fuel consumption around town, but it uses a lot more fuel than the zafira at motorway speeds.

bear1

JohnBoy26 wrote: »

Yeah but your comparing petrol with diesel there, hardly a fair argument Imo. The diesel will always win out, especially against a car that is known to be not all that economical.

Yep, you're right. Stupid comparison.
Ok, I'll go back a few years to when my parents had a 1.2 Punto and a 850cc Seicento.
Seicento was drinking just as much as the Punto due to the amount of times the gears had to be changed just to do anything.

fmcg_scribe

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

so much wrong with the article i don't know where to begin.

generalising all engines between 1.0 and 2.0 and not even differentiating between aspiration or fuel type is never going to give a result worth discussing is it.

Don't get too hung up on particular engine sizes or fuel types. The key point is that the standard mpg test used by car makers has been questioned once again.

There are plans to change the rules for mpg tests:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/35501/new-mpg-tests-way
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/88320/eu-to-crack-down-on-unrealistic-car-mpg-figures

pred racer

The only thing I took from that article is the figure of 18% lower than manufacturers spec over 500 cars.

I use 20% as a rule of thumb, nice to be nearly right for once:P

Anyone who didn't realise that small engines use a lot of fuel when you're revving the tits off them needs their head looked at tbh.

Marcusm

Congrats on the misleading thread title; it's not that smaller cars have the worst fuel economy so much as their real world economy diverges most from the stndardised test.

fmcg_scribe

Marcusm wrote: »

Congrats on the misleading thread title; it's not that smaller cars have the worst fuel economy so much as their real world economy diverges most from the stndardised test.

I elected to leave title of article as was. With newspapers generally, subeditors tend to decide titles of articles - the authors' views are usually ignored.

Feel free to raise a complaint with the Daily Torygraph.:)

dr.fuzzenstein

pred racer wrote: »

The only thing I took from that article is the figure of 18% lower than manufacturers spec over 500 cars.

I use 20% as a rule of thumb, nice to be nearly right for once:P

Anyone who didn't realise that small engines use a lot of fuel when you're revving the tits off them needs their head looked at tbh.

The problem is that these people are in charge of policy.
So they're saying "Ah Jaysus, you'll be drivin' dem 2 liter petrol cars? Jaysus, that'll cosht ya!"
No thinking goes on beyond that, just listen to whoever is minister for transport at the time.
Government policy, wham up fuel, wham up taxes, grand! Off to the pub.

dgt

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

The problem is that these people are in charge of policy.
So they're saying "Ah Jaysus, you'll be drivin' dem 2 liter petrol cars? Jaysus, that'll cosht ya!"
No thinking goes on beyond that, just listen to whoever is minister for transport at the time.
Government policy, wham up fuel, wham up taxes, grand! Off to the pub.

Exactly this. Most people are too stupid to see beyond their noses. Leave them to it

Sure my C200 averages 31mpg. But it's a reliable old sod that needs an oil change every 10k miles. Parts are peanuts. Tyres are peanuts to buy. Super easy to work on. Sufficient power. Handles fantastically in standard guise. I'm raging I didn't have one years ago, you hear a lot of "opinionated" bullsh*te about these cars. Sure I could downsize to a smaller petrol, but I would in my arse. In fact if I wanted to change it, I'd be going for a bigger engined C class :cool:

I'd rather it every time over some crappy little econobox that costs 100x what I paid for the car, has chape taaaax, a new plate and high mpg

nice_guy80

Marcusm wrote: »

Congrats on the misleading thread title; it's not that smaller cars have the worst fuel economy so much as their real world economy diverges most from the stndardised test.

like most cars really.