Driving & Driving Test Tips: gas mileage, honda civic dx, toyota camry hybrid

Question
What car on the market today gets the best gas mileage?

Answer
The highest MPG of all cars for 2007 is the Toyota Prius Hybrid.  It gets up to 60 mpg in the city and 51 on the highway.  That might sound backward, but the Prius as a Hybrid gets extra mpg from using its brakes, and you do more of that in town.  Also, it can run quite a bit of the time on batteries in town, but not much at all on the highway.

Next is the Honda Civic DX with 40 mpg highway and 30 in town.

There are many others that get almost that same mpg, and another big bunch at about 32-34 highway and in the high 20's in the city.

To research both new and used cars, an excellent site is this one:

http://www.edmunds.com/

click on RESEARCH the vehicles and you can find out their MPG ratings, pricing, and very important, the site will tell you all the incentives (search for this info, it is a great money saver) both advertised and non-advertised.  You can save thousands by being prepared and knowing what is available.

to research mpg results, here is a good page:

   http://tinyurl.com/ynjo9g

For more conventional looks the Toyota Camry Hybrid gives pretty good value.  40 city and 38 highway MPG is great for a mid-size car.

For value, the Toyota Yaris gets good reviews, but for fun AND MPG the Honda FIT seems to be the best driving of the small "tall" cars.   These are cars with good interior room, not the cramped little torture chambers of years past.

The american cars are not to be forgotten here, as the Ford Focus us an older design, but a very good car, with lots of room, and a relative bargain.  GM and Chrysler all make several high mpg cars.  

For instance, the Pontiac Vibe crossover small SUV/tall wagon (hard to classify these types of cars) gets up to 29 city/34 highway.

The Honda and Toyota groups seem to get all the press, but if looking for a car to live with for some time, don't just go with the highest mpg, drive them all, and not just around the block, take them for a 20-30 minute drive over roads you are somewhat familiar with.

Keep in mind that all these MPG figures are for 2007 model cars.  For 2008 the Government is requiring all vehicles sold in the US to be evaluated on a much more realistic driving cycle, and almost every car/light truck will go DOWN in mpg because of this, so don't compare 2008 model MPG with 2007 model MPG.  

I have found that it IS possible to get the MPG figures listed for 2007 and before, but only if you follow good driving practices of easy starts and stops, little idling and keep top speeds at or slightly below the speed limit.   Start hot rodding around and going faster and mpg drops pretty quick on everything.

Don