Technical Abarth 500 MPG - what do you get?

[flintymginty]

I was wondering what mpg other Abarth 500 owners were getting as I think my credentials are pretty poor.

The car has done about 900 miles now and it was 'run in' pretty quickly after lots of people were saying to drive it normally from day 1 rather than pootling about at 20 everywhere to run the engine in (as mondern engines don't need to be run in like your old austin mini which had nearly round cylinders but the pistons would shape them to the right size after a few hundred miles...) anyway this is what I am getting:

Last tank:
230 miles with 34 left on range indicator.
32.2 average mpg and I drove like a granny since filled up. No sport button on, changing gear with the indicator and not driving fast.

Note journeys are mainly small, but even on longer runs the mpg is just not climbing up anywhere near the 43 combined they reckon it could do.

Is it because its still new, or has the ECU somehow decided that cos my usual driving style is 'nippy' (hence the Abarth!!!) that its just gonna pump the fuel in anyway as I've managed to get it to backfire a couple of times now (pop pop pop up the road like a rally car!)

Will it get better,, especially as the tank before I did 170 miles before it needed filling up and only really went for one proper burn on the back roads from Northampton to Poddington and got the average mpg down to 27!!!

Also, will it get faster as it gets older? This is what the dealer said I hope so!!!

Just worried as my boyfriend's vectra CDTi can pretty much keep up!

 

[olopboy]

I get 35.5 avg everywhere, but I do a lot of in town driving and when I'm not well ... I enjoy the car

As to a large diesel lump being able to use the large amount of torque to keep up no huge surprise, its a great nippy fun car but it's certainly not the fastest car out there. If they were on your bumper all the time in a 1.2 corsa then I'd worry.

 

[flintymginty]

As to a large diesel lump being able to use the large amount of torque to keep up no huge surprise, its a great nippy fun car but it's certainly not the fastest car out there. If they were on your bumper all the time in a 1.2 corsa then I'd worry. [/quote]

True - it is very quick of the lights!! Can't get the 182 I had a couple of years ago out of my head though - but that was a 2 litre with 182 horses! Although, got much much better mpg out of it - always between 34 and 38 mpg and that car had a very hard life, if you get my drift (182 + straight fens roads = FUN!)

How many miles has your abarth done now? Did it take a while to 'warm up' to better mpg? I put my foot down and almost instantly i'm in the high 20's!

Not that its a great bother, but if the bf gets the insignia VXR he keeps harping on about I think I probably will start to worry about the mpg's will need to remortgage for the fuel bill!

 

[olopboy]

She's done a shade over 4k, I had an avg of 37.5mpg doing erm a well a reasonably paced run down the A1 from York to Peterborough following a friend in an AGP id seemed to be markedly better after about 1.5k but I can't really remeber, always seems to defualt to 35.5 after a few days of dull commute.

 

[DraigFlag87]

As the car loosens up (so to speak!) it will become faster an less economical when driven hard, and more economical when driven slow. My worst is 17 MPG but my best is 51 MPG, but now i tend to average 34 to 38 MPG from normal driving with the odd blast where as in the first few months i was averaging 27 to 32 MPG from the same kind of driving. Hope this helps.

 

[Alex_gregory_uk]

I have 4,500 miles on mine and noticed a big difference around the 3,000 mark in performance and mpg. I get 36 mpg which is a lot of short town driving to work. In the last 500 miles the exhaust has got louder and become deaper as well

 

[ads abarth]

I do mainly short fast runs, as it's my fun car, so far I have 31 MPG average over 1000 miles.

Always in sport mode in mine. On a long run mine gets 38 - 40 MPG, so yours doesn't sound very good.

Are you geting the MPG from the speedo display, or from calculations?

I don't think 50 MPG is easy to get, and the sport mode button is not good for improving MPG, as you end up flooring it to get any poke.

Note MPG may vary slightly as I have the SS kit.

 

[gib1970]

if you're doing mostly short urban trips then your mpg is entirely ok - a lot of it does depend on the sort of journeys you're doing. i mostly average 30mpg around town but that soon goes up by 10-15 if i do some out of town drives.

 

[knightsofmeltonia]

I have 4,500 miles on mine and noticed a big difference around the 3,000 mark in performance and mpg.

Same here - I did Leicester to Manchester and back on just over quarter of a tank the other day. It's a huge improvement on my old Mini Cooper S!It does seem very thirsty on short trips, so maybe I should turn the sport button off

 

[Sean_Bucks]

6000 miles, 36.7 mpg, sport always on, mixed short and longer trips