Economical automatic car search

Lum

The congestion charge thing is probably the most valid reason to buy a Prius. Even though I'm not a huge believer in the whole CO2 will destroy the planet thing, if I had to drive into the Con Charge zone daily, and couldn't claim it on expenses, you bet I'd buy a bloody Prius.

Then when the batteries finally died I'd swap in a 1JZ or something just for the hell of it because from what I can tell it would still be exempt.

knightstyle

The whole point of this thread is to find an economical car with outstanding mpg! Nissan quashquai in non automatic form gives 30.8 mpg! My old Scenic diesel automatic gives 38 overall, 43 if I drive carefully on a long run. I have not driven in London for many years so congestion charge irrelevant. The car has cost about £800 a year depreciation, £2100 for 5.5 years repairs, maintenance etc. and now costs about £1500 in fuel. So my biggest expense is fuel and I would have thought that one of the new automatics without the fluid flywheel and with stop/start would give something approaching 60 mpg?
Seat Leon emotion gives over 60 mpg combined cycle and the Ibiza emotion much more but they are not available as automatics!

bigjl

knightstyle wrote: »

So my biggest expense is fuel and I would have thought that one of the new automatics without the fluid flywheel and with stop/start would give something approaching 60 mpg?
Seat Leon emotion gives over 60 mpg combined cycle and the Ibiza emotion much more but they are not available as automatics!

I would be very surprised if any Auto gave anywhere near 60mpg, have you thought about a petrol engined car, then getting it converted to LPG, this won't increase your mpg, but the fuel is a lot cheaper, and so may work out financially about the same.

In other words an auto car doing about 35mpg, running on LPG would cost about the same as a diesel car doing 60mpg, remeber that diesel is a bit more expensive than petrol.

With a dsg box you have the best chance of getting near to a manual cars fuel consumption, especially if you use it in manual mode.

wazza

i agree that cars with DSG gearbox will offer similar mpg to the manual version.