EPA estimates for my 2014 Camry 2.5 L 4-cylinder are 25/35 mpg.
I get actual 35-37 mpg for highway driving.
Around town actual mpg varies depending on how many very short distances with how many stops I make. Stops being turning the engine off, not just sitting at red lights. Worst I get is 20.5 to 22 mpg. If I’m making few stops I get 24 to 25. If I take a long drive at slow in town speeds with no or only one stop, I can get 25 to 27 mpg.
The car’s computer tends to claim better mpg than I actually get for in town, frequent stops driving as computed by miles driven divided by gas pumped. For driving with few stops either in town at slow speeds or highway driving the computer is close to accurate. In fact, for long distance highway miles, I often get slightly better by one or two miles than the computer estimates.
You’d think there’d be some fuel economy loss with a smog pump due to the fact that it’s another draw on the engine. Maybe a similar loss as a mechanical fan compared to electric fans. Which would be pretty small, I suppose.
No experience there myself, I never owned a vehicle with an operating smog pump. I assume they must’ve been somewhat problematic, as by the time I acquired a vehicle used that came equipped with one, often it was already removed. In that, they remind me of the modern diesel emissions equipment. Somewhat problematic and often removed.
This bizarre claim was made by a salesperson–rather than a driver/owner–but I know someone who was looking (very briefly…) at a Chrysler 200 a few years ago, before that loser of a vehicle was dropped by the manufacturer. The salesman told my friend, “It drives just like a BMW!”.
Yeah… perhaps if the BMW in question had reached about 140k miles, had never been maintained, and was being driven on severely under-inflated tires…
I must lived a sheltered life, never heard very many outrageous claims about vehicles. I can only think of two. The first, my high school chums told me if I installed headers on my 62 Ford Galaxy (equipped with a straight 6, 222 cubic inch), it would go really, really fast. I doubted this claim, even not knowing what headers actually were. The second, I was messing around w/my 4WD truck one afternoon, testing it on some short but steep up-hills. Another 4WD truck comes along, driver and his girlfriend watching me. When I come back down and say “hello” he ignores me & says to his gf: "Let’s go up THAT big hill over there!! " THAT particular hill was very, very steep, very long to reach the top, and even worse — rock strewn & rutted. I’d never even attempt such a thing in my truck. But he was gung-ho to do it. The gf balked at first, but after some ribbing she eventually agreed to go along. About halfway up the truck completely loses traction, stalls, and starts sliding backwards. The gf is completely scared out of her wits, opens the passenger door and jumps out. She walks back down, arriving scratched and bruised, and not at all happy with the bf, who eventually is able to back his truck back down the hill, arriving 10 minutes after her.
30 mpg should have been possible for the standard shift 145 cubic inch Corvair. My daughter regularly gor 27 with her 66 , 170 cubic inch, standard shift Valiant and my father in law got 27 on the road in his standard shift Plymouth Savoy on the only road trip he ever took with it. He did however think that most speed limits were too fast. Given his driving ability, I suppose they were , for him.
I have had to back down many times while hill climbing or at the sand dunes, you can back down faster than going up. If you don’t challenge yourself it isn’t entertaining, may as well stay home and play video games.
All speed limits, he would usually go 5 under what was posted unless it would make him go over 50. He had no pattern of what lane to use and exit and enter ann expressway directly to or from whatever lane he chose. If he was driving in the right lane of an expressway he would start to take every off ramp and then veer back onto the right lane when he finally realized it was going off the expressway. He did this because he drove staring at the ground directly in front of his car to avoid potholes. Fortunately by the time we got interstate highways near us he wasn’t doing much driving and usually stayed within 6 or 7 miles of his house. We had the New York Thruway but he would never take a toll road if there was another way to get there. There may have been worse drivers, but he was the worst one that I knew.
The smog pumps of the old days simply pumped fresh air into the exhaust manifold so there was no pressure involved, very little drag on the engine, and so on.
I can relate something that many may not believe. Back in the 90s I bought a like new Subaru 4WD wagon. These were rated at 27 MPG and that’s what mine got consistently. However, the Hitachi carburetors on them are junk when new and go downhill from there. Throttle body/float chamber warpage, external air leaks, internal gas leaks, you name it.
I went to the boneyard and snagged a 1 barrel off of a 250 CI Ford 6 cylinder. I milled an adapter plate and put the Ford carb on the Subaru. I fully expected a mileage drop as it was over-carburetion but if it would start fine hot/cold and idle fine I didn’t care.
Once on it did just that. Started instantly every time and idled smooth as silk.
A 250 mile road trip a few weeks later allowed me to check the mileage. 38 MPG. No way in hxxx I thought. Must have misfigured something. Over the next 6 months of checking mileage including an out of state trip I found the car was actually getting 38 MPG.
I’ve always wondered why someone up top did not ever come up with this on all of them.
Not only did it start fine and idle fine acceleration on the road was vastly improved.
I can’t say that I’ve ever fully understood this.
Years ago…a co-worker had a problem with the Carb on her Chysler Lebaron. I was able to buy an Edelbrock carb cheaper then a rebuilt carb. It fit almost perfectly.Had to make a simple adjustment with throttle cable. After about a month my co-worker told me he was seeing a substantial increase in gas mileage.Performance was about the same. That really shocked me because the Edelbrock was suppose to be give a performance increase…He was real happy.
The most outrageous claims I’ve heard are from Car salesperson. They either don’t know their own product, or they just lie to make a sale. (probably both). When buying a car I make sure I know the vehicle I’m looking to purchase BEFORE I even talk about price. For the past 40+ years of buying vehicles I’ve come across maybe 2 or 3 truly honest and knowledgeable salesperson.
I was driving and working the loading dock on second shift in the early 1060sas part of a 4 man crew. We had a security guard who came in at 1:30 am to watch the terminal until morning. The trouble was, we were not always done at 1:30 and he was a real nuisance.
He would remove keys from trucks we had to move, shut off the fuel pumps while we were fueling and close and lock dock doors we still had to use.
When we finally convinced him that he could not do any of those things before we were done, he started following us around bragging about his car.
It was a 59 Ford flip top convertible with 4 snow tire on it and a V8. He was making outrageous mpg claims about it, up to 31 mpg. (even 20 would have been stretching the truth.) For a month we started adding gas to his tank, only a gallon or two at first , the last week we added 5 gallons. He was ecstatic, his mileage claims grew wilder still. Then we started siphoning gas back out over the next month until we has taken out as much as we put in. He became morose and stopped following us around.
Healthy attitude! Reminds me of Willy Loman in the “Death of a Salesman” and his changing opinion about his car as the play progresses. During an election campaign various candidates will say one outrageous thing after another, often contradicting themselves as the campaign progresses.
I had a '90’s Prizm (Corolla) that I got around 40 MPG over several years. You should know that I’m a hypermileage driver, e.g. highways w/ little traffic I go 45 MPH. So this is likely the top that anyone is going to get. Yes, on longer trips I go 75 on Interstates but those trips are a smaller percentage of the total mileage.
Thank you for that information . . . I know very well what a hypermiler is, though I usually hear that term used in conjunction with Prius, Insight, and other hybrids
You’ll probably agree that most drivers are not hypermilers, correct?
As such, I don’t expect the average driver of a mid-1990s Corolla to easily get mileage in the mid-40s, as the guy on the other website claimed. Sure, it might be possible, but not likely for the vast majority of people who drive such a vehicle.
A hypermiler is definitely not the average driver
You drive in a very fuel efficient manner . . . consider it a compliment
Keep in mind, as I wrote above, there were two “mid-1990s” Corollas, the 6th generation E90 and the 7th generation E100, and the E90 was a smaller lighter car. Both models were sold throughout the 1990s, and depending on the location, both models sported the Corolla badge.
Maybe a hypemiler driving an E100 might be able to get 40+ MPG, but a hypermiler getting 40+ MPG out of E90 is even more plausible.
I had a 61 Corvair and I have no idea what the mileage was. It was mainly in town use and short trips. But it was a light car, 4 cyl., (correction 6 cyl.) dual carbs, etc. so I suppose it’s possible it would at least hit 25. I used to get 25 on the highway with my 59 VW and that was a light car with 4 cyl. but four speed and a whopping 36 hp. At 32.9 cents per gallon, it really didn’t matter too much. A dollar would get you through a Friday night of cruising.
