One mile commute you should get a segway

 

A segway with winter tires. Everybody would be like

 

Behold. The X2.

 

That's awesome

 

After my last service about 2500 miles ago I decided not to reset the mpg average when I filled up. As of Saturday, the average is 26.4. Mild suburbs with open spaces but plenty of stoplights near the commercial areas. Wife is the main driver and she is very easy on it. Always use 92 or 93.

 

She keeps it looking good too

 

Running pure gas on the last tank I got 29.6 mpg which is in the neighborhood of my normal mpg for the HHR. Mixed driving highway, city. Definitely not worth the $0.60 premium price for the gas.

 

This is a good, realistic testament that mpg is relative to the driving habits of the individual owner. It is not always a reflection of the vehicle in general. Thanks for your honesty Hillsdale.

Ever see someone boasting 42 mpg? You typically see no conditional information with these statements. Where/when/how? All the time, city and hwy? Doubtful in a real-life, all-the-time situation, otherwise GM would be wanting this car for an efficiency analysis.

Some owners drive short runs to work through neighborhoods and secondary highways. Others might have a somewhat long drive on the interstate with only a few traffic lights in between. I happen to use my HHR SS for business with a little personal use thrown in, so I might drive 100 miles at a clip on the interstate, but also combine some urban driving between the interstate clips. Realistic mpg should reflect realistic use. This type of driving yielded about 27 mpg for me under mid range ambient temps (40-60F) during better weather. I have about 26k on my SS now and it has had the turbo upgrade since about 7k.

Outside of business use, I had a 2000 mile run (1000mi each way) from NY to Fla in December. Temp was colder than usual, even down there (50F). I ran the hwy at about 70mph, had 3 people in the car, a cargo area filled with luggage to the roof and yielded about 28.9 overall, which was better than I expected it would be. I'm typically easy on the throttle on these types of trips (unless I need to pass an uncooperative stalemate lumbering along in the hammer lane), because it's not much of a thrill to punch it out with a car full.