greyghost

This may be a silly question..but did you actually reset your fuel mileage at the beginning of the trip. If not, it still was calculating off the mpg's you were getting from being in the city. I live in the mountains of Maryland and regularly take trips to Baltimore(appx 2 hours) and even with the strain of going up the mountains, I average 29-31 mpg's on those trips. I do have the 2.2 with a manual so Im sure that helps too. Good luck and welcome to the site.

Desert Coyote

I agree with the comment made about winter mix gasoline. Mine got *awesome* fuel mileage on our cross-country July trip, I was regularly getting fuel ranges above 500 miles whenever I would fill up. (Mileage-wise, we started the trip at 8 grand and ended it at 12 grand, with an oil change at the halfway point) Now that I'm on Buffalo winter mix gas, the mileage is significantly lower. Not enough to make me complain, however, I still get pretty good gas mileage, and much better than my old gas-guzzler Firebird ever did.

Load doesn't seem to be much of an issue regarding fuel mileage with this car, as we were fully loaded going to Arizona and even more loaded coming back ... we picked up a couple pieces of furniture while in Arizona to bring back. With the full load, I found that 65-70 was the peak speed to go for maximum fuel mileage, obviously best at 65. I could observe this because of variances in speed limits ... we started using more gas in Arizona (75mph) than in Utah (70mph) or Colorado (65mph). Utah and Colorado's weird gas didn't faze the car either (using a mountain-grade gasoline one octane point lower than standard gas), and I didn't gas up in Oklahoma (same weird grade), so I don't know what the lower-grade gas would have done at sea level.

SchoolBusHHR

Really? 26? Deal with it! I just drove a Suburban with another car attached to the back for 6 hours. I was lucky to average 11.

HHR Forever

Guh-huht.

Asylum_Doc

I also drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee and pull a 26 foot camper with it. I get 9-12 when pulling the camper. I expect to get low mileage out of a V8 towing LOL.

Thanks for the all the replies, I was just a tad surprised to be in the mid 20s thats all. But, I do have to admit this was some fairly hilly hiways and my minimum highway speed was just over 65, but most of my driving was indeed at 70-75 so I am sure that is where my drop was.

I was however VERY pleased with the trip. We have a flip down DVD player so the kids watched a couple movies on the way up and it was warm enough to have the sunroof popped up.

Heading back to Missouri today (Sedalia), about a 5 hour drive.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, I'll be for a while :)

JimZ_HHR

This time, reset all the settings on the DIC... except the oil that is, i.e. Econ, Average Speed, etc.

270weatherby

Guess i've been lucky. In town 10 mile trip to work through Anchorage I average 22-24 mpg. Highway trip w/o stopping typically driving south toward the Kenai I get 34-36 mpg. though the car did fairly bad at 17-19 mpg in town until it was broken in. But that deffinatly beat my Burb eating 12 in town.

Black Rose

It is? I just checked the window sticker for mine (still have it) and according to the Energuide info it is rated at 28 city and 42 highway.

Never mind. We use an Imperial gallon up here which is 20% larger than the US gallon. That explains the difference in the numbers.

WA_HHR

I have a 06' with a 2.4/stick, I get 26-28 around town (I get a bit heavy footed sometimes), and 30-32 highway (if not going over the magic 65 mark). It beat driving a 76 chry. newport with a 400 brl, maybe 12 average town/highway.

oneton

I have a 2.2/Auto 28,000+ 27-29 mpg not bu DIC by miles/gal have reset DIC on fill up and DIC is real close to my #