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Fuel Economy: Myth or Fact?
Wringing the most out of our fuel is very much the in thing, whether you’re a greenie or a meanie. Information about what you can do to save fuel and improve your car’s fuel economy gets handed on and handed around. But are some of the things that Uncle Fred taught you actually going to help improve your fuel economy?
• Myth or Fact? You need to warm your car up before you can drive it properly.
• Myth. Even if you are in the chilliest parts of the world, you don’t need to warm a car up before you can drive it. Sure, you might need to apply the choke for a little bit in the depths of winter, but if the engine is turning over, you’ve got the energy needed to turn the wheels. If you do use the choke, remember to turn close it off after about five minutes.
• Myth or Fact? Small cars are more economical than large cars.
• Myth. As my fellow-blogger David commented, fuel economy is getting very, very sexy in the motoring world, and the guys and girls who come up with car ads are just as likely to mention the fuel economy figures as they are to mention the torque. This means that fuel-saving technology is being applied to medium-sized and even large cars. This is good news of all of us for whom a little Honda Jazz or similar is impractical – there’s no need to jam a family of leggy teenagers into the back of a little hatchback in the interest of saving fuel.
• Myth or fact? Driving less aggressively is more fuel efficient.
• Fact. If you demand less of the car, it can work more efficiently. Feather-light touches on the accelerator, gentle braking and smooth cornering are easy on the car and mean that it uses less fuel. Fierce acceleration, hard braking and tight cornering might be all right on the race track but are bad for fuel economy, as well as making you obnoxious on the road to your fellow drivers. This is anecdotal evidence, but I’ve recently picked up a 4-litre Ford Fairlane . Keeping a light foot keeps the average fuel consumption (according to the trip computer) nice and low. Plant the boot and the figures soar. Think of the effortless and graceful soaring of a seagull or an eagle compared to the aggressive and frantic flapping of a chook.
• Myth or fact? After-market additives and thingummies can make your car run better.
• Myth. According to a Reader’s Digest article and the US Department of Energy, most gadgets and additives that you chuck in along with your petrol don’t make your car any more efficient, and the only thing that they clean out is your wallet. The exception is a full conversion to LPG or something along those lines.
• Myth or fact? Replacing your air filter will improve your fuel economy.
• Fact – sort of. Changing the air filter does indeed improve the fuel economy of older cars. However, with modern cars, changing the air filter improves the performance but doesn’t actually improve the fuel economy. This is because a lot of modern engines have computerised controls that maintain the right fuel to air ratio, no matter what state the filter’s in.
• Myth or fact? Idling uses more fuel than restarting your car.
• Fact. If you have to wait for that person who’s running late or if you’re held up by road works, switching the engine right off and restarting it again uses a lot less fuel. OK, it might not be a good idea to do this at the traffic lights, unless you know that you’re going to have to wait a long time until the lights go green.
Buying Privately?
OK, although here at Private Fleet, we work with customers to help them get the best deal on the sort of car they want (). But we do know that sometimes, people will use our site for research via the car reviews and then go and buy the car they want through a private sale that’s been advertised on an online auction site of the EBay type or through the good old classified ads in the newspaper.
For those that are buying through private sales directly from the owner rather than through us or from a dealer, here are a couple of tips to help you get a good deal (of course, you can avoid the hassle by going through us, etc. etc. in shameless plug for what we do).
1. Don’t agree to meet the car owner in a park or anywhere apart from their house. For one thing, you won’t be able to see those tell-tale pools of oil on the driveway or in the garage. For another thing, the owner will have driven to the meeting place, so when you see the car and try to start it up, it’ll be hot and you won’t have the chance of starting it from cold.
2. In a similar vein, the first thing you should do when inspecting the car is to put your hand on the bonnet. If it’s warm while the rest of the car isn’t, the owner has warmed it up. This is a warning sign about what the thing is like when starting from cold.
3. Sellers who are about to move overseas are more open to negotiation, as they just want to get rid of the thing for a price that’s more or less in the right vicinity. What’s more, the car is likely to be in reasonable condition – they would have been driving it still if they hadn’t been moving to Japan or wherever.
4. Wealthy people can be easier to haggle with, as a couple of hundred bucks don’t make much difference to them, even though it can mean a fortnight’s groceries to you. However, some wealthy people became wealthy by watching every single penny. In this case, keep your fingers crossed and hope that they sympathise with your situation as they were there once and know what it’s like to be on a tight budget, rather than Mr Scrooge.
5. Be very, very suspicious about cars being sold privately by mechanics or panel beaters. If they’re selling it, it’s probably because they can’t fix it up any further and want to get rid of the thing before it explodes. If you’ve ever had a courtesy car from a local Mum & Dad garage/mechanics (as opposed to a courtesy car from a specialist garage), you’ll know that these tend to be in rather rough condition, although they are road legal. Something being sold off is probably worse. Stay away from them unless you own a wrecker’s yard. Stay even further away from amateur car mechanics, as the resulting junk heap is a failed project and is best used as scrap or given a second life as a hen house.
6. Also be a bit dubious about cars that have been given after-market modifications such as lowering, fat tyres and sporty accessories. Guess how this car has been driven.
7. You are less likely to find them being sold off in private sales, but ex-taxis and ex-cop cars tend to have high mileage and good maintenance histories.
Get Me To The Church On Time
I don’t know whether it’s because it’s summer time or whether it’s to do with Valentine’s Day being just around the corner but I’ve seen quite a few cars running around the place on Saturdays with white ribbons on.
Now, once upon a time, probably back when my parents got married, there was less fuss about what sort of car was used to get the bride to church on time. The thing that really mattered was that she arrived there, preferably on time. I’m not sure when the tradition of having a fancy car (or a horse and carriage) to turn up in and go from the church to the photo shoot location to the reception in came from, but it appears to be fairly recent. My suspicion is that it dates back as far as the early 1980s and the start of the glamour-wedding industry that started after the royal wedding of Charles and Diana.
So what sort of car makes a good wedding car? Well, the only hard and fast rule about wedding cars is that you have to be able to get some white ribbon going from the sides of the windows and/or the top of the car down to the front of the car. The best sorts of cars are those that have a large medallion on the bumper, which simply begs to have ribbons attached to it. This means that classic Jaguars and Mercedes-Benz cars tend to be rather popular, although thanks to the design of modern vehicles and the demands of aerodynamics, the big medallions seem to be disappearing.
A wedding car should be luxurious in some way, and preferably largish. We’re talking about high-end vehicles here – usually European luxury models such as BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Audi, Alfa Romeos and the like, although you could probably throw a Lexus into the list these days, along with some of the classier American numbers (Dodge and Chrysler). However, if you are passionate devotees of the blue oval or the lion, then a big V8 Ford or Holden – or the upmarket FPV or HSV – could also fit the bill. Custom seems to dictate that the wedding car is driven by a chauffeur (who can be Uncle Fred or the person who owns the car rather than a pro) and the bride needs to sit in the back in all her finery. After the ceremony, the groom needs to join here there. This means that although you might love the idea of a nippy little Alfa Romeo sports car as a wedding car, it’s going to be a bit awkward getting in and out of it. Four-wheel-drives don’t seem to be used as wedding cars much. I’ve certainly never seen one all decked out with the white ribbon, but given the tendency to find interesting and out of the way locations for photo shoots and outdoor weddings, a nice, luxurious Range Rover wouldn’t exactly be out of place.
Classic cars tend to be quite popular. If you are lucky enough to own a classic, you might like to consider hiring it out as a wedding car (and you go with it as the chauffeur) as a way of making a bit of pocket money on the side. These days, you get some of the quirkier classics being used as wedding cars, such as the cute VW Beetle (the old style), Minis and Kombis.
And what do you do if you want a car that doesn’t have a big medallion for getting ribbon onto? Here’s how you do it: Start by threading the ribbon through the grille above the front bumper – there’s usually somewhere you can do this. If you can’t get it through the grille, then feed it through the bumper. Get the ribbon even. Take one side up and put it through either the passenger side window or through the passenger side door and fix it to the sun visor. Do the same on the other side. If you want a bow out the front, make this separately and attach it to the bit of ribbon going through the grille. If you’ve fed the ribbon through the door, don’t slam the door; if the ribbon has gone through the window, don’t open the window.
There is another sort of wedding car, although this sort seems to be going out of fashion a bit (or else I’ve never been in the right place at the right time to see it). This is the getaway car, which tends to be what the newlyweds use to leave the reception in and head off on honeymoon in. This can be any sort of car, and if it isn’t a hired car, then it’s traditional to do this car up with balloons, tin cans, shaving cream, confetti and “Just Married” signs. There are two rules for getaway cars:
- Don’t put a potato over the exhaust pipe or you risk gassing the newlyweds.
- Wash any shaving cream messages off the back asap. If you leave it overnight, it can etch itself into the paint. This happened to me and for ages afterwards, you could see what was written when the car was in the right light. What made it worse was that my brother, who had done the car up, had made a spelling mistake so that little car had “Just Maried” on it for the rest of the time we owned it.
Going Smaller
Big engines that guzzle the gas are getting the boot. Over in America, the popular Dodge Ram is big on the outside but getting a whole lot smaller under the bonnet. In the past, the Dodge Ram housed the very powerful and thirsty hemi engines. We love the performance, but when it comes to filling up at the pump you felt rather like a deflated balloon. Modern times have put the squeeze on these gas guzzler types, and we’re seeing the smaller 3.6-litre Pentaster V6 engine doing the job for the Ram really well. In fact, the same Pentaster V6 engine is showing up in the Jeep Wrangler, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Journey and Dodge 300 C.
In North America, the latest Car of the Year was the new Cadillac sedan. In the past Cadillac sedans have housed big, powerful engines under the hood. This is certainly not so with the new Cadillac sedan which is an AWD or RWD vehicle that is similar in size to the BMW 3 Series. Now, four and six cylinder engines are used for moving the new Cadillac, and the result has been hugely popular. Rave reviews for the car’s performance and handling goes to show that smaller engines can still produce an enjoyable and satisfying drive.
It’s working in America, and I think we can expect more of the same here in Australia. People are turning to thriftier Holden and Ford products, with a marked drop in sales for the current Falcon and Commodore models showing that people are making careful choices about what size engine is going to drive their new car. If it’s not a new Toyota or Mazda, then Holden’s Cruze is outselling the Commodore. The Holden Commodore currently sells about 15,000 units a year – which is less than a third of what Holden sold in the nineties.
Ford, like Holden, has worked really hard on producing LPG variants to bring the running costs of the big Australian icons more into line with what consumers want as far as economy goes. Ford also has brought the EcoBoost 2.0-litre Turbo engine into the Falcon mix which I like the look of, and it appears is very economical.
I hope that we won’t lose the Commodore and Falcon models altogether, but it’s hard to see how Ford and Holden can make them viable. What they’re up against is people’s tastes, because when people want the smaller engine size, there are a whole lot of cars on the market that offer this in a package that’s as good as, if not better, than Ford and Holden’s models. The competition all of a sudden becomes much, much tougher for Australian car manufacturers.
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