Alex
Nordschleife
- Joined
- 6 Mar 2014
- Messages
- 22,188
At the weekend I had to bob down to the South of France for a couple of days to sort something out. I only wanted a cheap small car so hired a Fiat 500. Upon collection I found out it was a Petrol Hybrid (as are all that model now). Second time I've been down there and hired a Hybrid, the first being a Toyota Auris, which pulled an average of 32mpg over the weekend trip.
So this time I thought I'd do a comparison to see what the Fiat would return.
Details of the trip this time:
2 people with minimal hand luggage
Driving style: Miss Daisy (In reality 81yr old Mum).
Trip length: 224.4 miles
Consisting of:
90 motorway miles
27 fast (60mph) A road miles
107 slow (30mph - 50mph) road miles
No traffic jams or queuing
Petrol used: 5.035 Gallons
Economy: 44.5mpg
I thought this was pretty poor considering we were in a small eco car and I pull 45mpg in the GF's 2004 1.6 Mini One cab on a similar trip. As well as that, the 500 was absolutely lousy to drive with regards to any power or torque. It had cruise control and a 6 speed box, but when setting the cruise at 70mph in 6th on the motorway, as soon as you got to a slow incline the speed dropped down to 50mph and stayed there, even once the road leveled out. The only way to get back up to speed was to then drop it into 4th (canceling the cruise) and accelerate back up, in to 5th, then 6th.
So when I got back I thought I'd check a few figures as the car just seemed so lame and uneconomical compared to what I expected.
Taken from the Gov's website I decided to compare a few variants of the 500 (had to compare older cars as they only do the Hybrid now) to see MPG / CO2 of the various models. Here's what I found:
I've ordered the cars from highest CO2 emmisions to lowest.
Hybrid - CO2 120 g/km
Petrol - CO2 99 g/km
Turbo Petrol - CO2 99 g/km
Diesel - CO2 89 g/km
So this time I thought I'd do a comparison to see what the Fiat would return.
Details of the trip this time:
2 people with minimal hand luggage
Driving style: Miss Daisy (In reality 81yr old Mum).
Trip length: 224.4 miles
Consisting of:
90 motorway miles
27 fast (60mph) A road miles
107 slow (30mph - 50mph) road miles
No traffic jams or queuing
Petrol used: 5.035 Gallons
Economy: 44.5mpg
I thought this was pretty poor considering we were in a small eco car and I pull 45mpg in the GF's 2004 1.6 Mini One cab on a similar trip. As well as that, the 500 was absolutely lousy to drive with regards to any power or torque. It had cruise control and a 6 speed box, but when setting the cruise at 70mph in 6th on the motorway, as soon as you got to a slow incline the speed dropped down to 50mph and stayed there, even once the road leveled out. The only way to get back up to speed was to then drop it into 4th (canceling the cruise) and accelerate back up, in to 5th, then 6th.
So when I got back I thought I'd check a few figures as the car just seemed so lame and uneconomical compared to what I expected.
Taken from the Gov's website I decided to compare a few variants of the 500 (had to compare older cars as they only do the Hybrid now) to see MPG / CO2 of the various models. Here's what I found:
I've ordered the cars from highest CO2 emmisions to lowest.
Hybrid - CO2 120 g/km
Petrol - CO2 99 g/km
Turbo Petrol - CO2 99 g/km
Diesel - CO2 89 g/km
