Incidentally, this type of looney story has been around since at least 1948, and the “miracle car” in question was originally a Chevrolet that got 100 mpg until some mysterious guys from GM showed up to “adjust” it. The Snopes website, which specializes in debunking stuff like this has a nice history of this recurring fantasy. To read it, go to:
The Snopes article also deals with the “miracle” Pogue carburetor that allegedly vaporized gasoline more completely in order to deliver extraordinary gas mileage. As with all of the other stuff being bandied about, the performance of that carburetor could never be verified–most likely because of some imagined conspiracy.
I don’t know which is sadder–the persistence of these fables or the deluded people who believe in them.
Hmmm, I’m amazed that people don’t believe. Have you ever owned a 1984 1.3l CRX?
I did, and ironically I was born in the Zoo, but lived in Fort Wayne then. I drove from Fort Wayne IN, back home to Kalamazoo for $1.63 achieving 69.5 mpg. So you would be correct in your statement that I didn’t get 70 mpg, … perhaps I shouldn’t have driven so fast.
You’ve just reopened a 10 year old thread chock full of looney claims. Did you get 69 mpg on a relatively short trip? Maybe. What was your lifetime mpgs? One short fill is subject to HUGE errors.
How did I miss this post the first time around? It’s hilarious. Almost as good as those flat-Earth dopes.BTW, I’ve owned 3 CRX’s, one of which I still have. I often beat the EPA mileage rating on road trips, but never by 25mpg. That’s just fantasy. Might as well pretend fuel line magnets and that vortex intake thing work if you’re gonna believe that.
The Feds say highway mileage on that car is about 45 MPG so I’m not buying for one minute that yours gets 25 MPG better than estimates.
texases is also correct about short fills being subject to huge errors. Fill it up, drive 300 miles on the interstate, and then refill it again. That will provide a much more accurate MPG figure.
I worked at a trucring company In the early 60s. 5 of us worked the second shift, doing all the dockwork and making late pickups.
We had a security guard that watched the place from when we were done until the terminal opened in the morning.
He drove a 58 Ford “Fliptop” Convertible that he had 4 snow tire on. The first time I had ever seen 4 snow tires on a car. He constantly bragged about the gas mileage on his car. He claimed it got in the mid 20s. Very few cars in 1958 would do that and certainly not a Y block Ford V8.
We got tired of listening to it and decided to do something about it. We started adding gas to his car. Only a gallon at a time at first. increasing slowly to 5 gallons a week.
He was ecstatic! His mileage kept getting better and better.
And then we started siphoning gas back out! We quit when we had taken out everything we had put in.
I actually do regularly get 70+ mpg commuting to work on this thing.
However, to get that kind of gas mileage, I have to stay off the freeway, go 65-70 mph and I’m lucky to get 60 mpg. I let it coast towards red lights and switch off the engine while waiting for trains to go by at railroad crossings.
Keeping it under 55 not only puts it in its gas mileage sweet spot, but also dramatically extends rear tire life.
People tend to lie about two things in relation to driving:
Their actual gas mileage
The amount of time it takes them to drive somewhere
The most extreme example of the second type of lie was demonstrated by a guy that my parents knew when I was a kid. He claimed that it took him only 30 minutes to drive from his home to his place of employment. The problem with his claim was that he also proudly proclaimed that he never drove his Rambler American more than 40 mph, and that he never used toll roads.
His daily commute was approximately 35 miles, and it might have been possible to do it in 30 minutes if he used the Garden State Parkway, and if he didn’t drive like Grandma. However, he used a very indirect route–with lots of traffic lights!–in order to avoid toll roads, and his actual drive time was probably something more like 55 minutes–on a good day.
Sometimes it’s not lying. People are really, really good at fooling themselves. Maybe he made a math error calculating mpg’s on one fillup, and every subsequent calculation was “an aberration.”
It’s the same kind of thing that leads people to believe magic potions like essential oils work – they get sick, use an essential oil, and feel better, and therefore magic potions are real. They’re not lying, but they fail to consider the idea that they would probably have started feeling better even if they didn’t use the magic potion, and the next time they get sick they’re unwilling to be scientific about it and abstain from the magic potion to see if they get better. And if they take the magic potion and don’t get better, they assume they had a different illness than they thought, and used the wrong magic potion - it can’t possibly be that they were wrong all along and that magic potions only work in fiction.
So you have a bunch of people running around saying that magic potions work, and they aren’t lying because they actually believe it, but they are completely deluded.
In this case, the thread was revived by somebody who remembered they got 69 mpg once with their CRX HF. Turns out it was on a 122 mile trip. HUGE potential for errors on that short of a drive.
I trust essential oils before I trust homeopathic or naturopathic “medicine”…granted they’re not front line therapy for me either. I do have a miniature diffuser in my car, though that I can use to diffuse oils that plugs into one of my power ports. Even if it doesn’t do much, the car smells nice!
Smelling good is fine. But when my nephew gets sick, my sister-in-law rubs essential oils on him. Newsflash: Peppermint extract doesn’t cure strep throat. Took him getting scarlet fever before she’d admit it wasn’t working and take him to a real doctor and not a wanna-be wizard.
no, but it does help with nausea. Believe it or not, settlers on the Oregon Trail took hard peppermint candy with them for that exact purpose. Qualities of Essential Oils vary greatly from brand to brand too…there are several out there I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pool…
And that’s probably the most frustrating thing is when people don’t realize that they’re best used as support therapy…definitely not primary therapy
Perhaps poorly worded. Try this. If I have to go 60-70 mph in order to keep up with freeway traffic, I’m lucky to get 60 mpg.
Of course, considering the traffic situation on I-35 south of Austin Tx, there are times when you wish you could use SECOND gear. The alternative roads not only allow me to travel at a gas mileage friendly speed, they are also more reliable, I never get to work really early, but I’m also never really late.
Also, the alternative non-freeway route is a couple of miles shorter distance wise.
Actually, the thing most people kid themselves the most about is their average speed. It’s not hard to find people who think they average 70 mph on the highway.
It’s not impossible to average 70 mph, but in order to do so, you have to be driving 80-90 mph most of the distance.
There’s a big difference between going 70 mph and actually being 70 miles away from here one hour from now.
I measure my gas mileage by dividing the miles driven by the gas added to the tank, reset my trip odometer after every fillup. If I get 40+ mpg for a dozen fillups in a row, I’m probably actually getting 40+ mpg.
When I owned a '91 Geo metro, no trip odometer, I logged the gas I bought and the odometer readings in a log book every time I filled up. Logging the total gas I bought for an entire year and dividing it into the miles I drove for that entire year resulted in 52 mpg.
When I say my motorcycle gets 70 + mpg, I mean tank after tank, not once in a row.
