The Cars.com Mileage Challenge: Part 3

We drove a Nissan Rogue, Subaru WRX, Dodge Grand Caravan and Hyundai Sonata from Chicago to Madison, Wis., and back to see what sort of real-world gas mileage we’d get. (Check out the introduction here and the results here.) We matched — or bettered — the EPA’s highway mileage estimates, which reflect stricter standards for 2008, without too much trouble. After crunching the numbers, we observed a few other trends, too:

• Sporty cars encourage you to drive hard, but that doesn’t mean your mileage will necessarily tank. The WRX brought out the aggressive driver in many of us. When you’ve been driving an SUV, minivan or family car with an automatic transmission, switching to a turbocharged sedan with a stick shift has a certain je ne sais quoi. Ah, who are we kidding — the quoi is pretty obvious. Needless to say, the WRX tempted us to drive a bit harder, but at the end of the day, our observed 24.9 mpg (based on the refill) exceeded its 16/23 rating. A pleasant surprise: The mileage ratings appear to leave room for a bit of fun behind the wheel.

• Driving styles don’t matter as much as you might think they do. The EPA says aggressive driving can dump mileage as much as 33 percent on the highway, but in our tests, there wasn’t much difference when we switched from one driver to the next. Nobody was driving crazy, but every driver is different. As long as conditions stayed about the same, though, so did mileage.
• Fuel-gauge accuracy is improving, but it still has a little way to go. We took photos of the fuel gauges in each car at various pit stops. Based on the vehicle’s fuel capacity, cumulative mileage and cumulative trip-computer readouts, we compared the gauges to how much gas was left in the tank. (The Rogue lacked a trip computer, so we estimated remaining fuel based on total mileage at the end of the trip and average variances for each leg.)

Left to Right: 2008 Nissan Rogue, 2008 Subaru WRX, 2008 Hyundai Sonata

• Rogue: Full tank, 85% remaining, 67% remaining, 49% remaining, 29% remaining
• WRX: Full tank, 85% remaining, 67% remaining, 49% remaining, 30% remaining
• Sonata: Full tank, 88% remaining, 72% remaining, 57% remaining, 41% remaining

The WRX’s gauges do a decent job reflecting the actual fuel in the tank — in fact, they appear in the third and fourth shots to suggest that the driver has less gas than he actually has. In the Rogue and Sonata, the needle looks a bit high, especially at the first stop.

Keep an eye out for these tests. We hope to do them with hybrids, pickup trucks and more, hopefully a couple times each year. In the meantime, we welcome your suggestions for future installments. What other figures would you like to see? Any types of cars in particular we should try out? Let us know in the comments below.

The Cars.com Mileage Challenge: Part 1
The Cars.com Mileage Challenge: Part 2