you're never too old to learn new tricks.. MPG

[grazuncle2]

This will be of not much interest to many performance car owners who want to just get on and really drive their car and not concern themselves with eeking out the jungle juice.. No problem; each to their own

However it seems I have been driving, perhaps uneconomically, for years it seems. (48 years?) Yes there are times when you will want to avoid an accident, get out of the way quickly or press on for something important. I don't want to be the snail then. However my learned behaviour from others and probably my dad was to get up to running speed by going quickly through the gears and into top.. that usually meant 3500 revs or higher in each gear to till reaching the appropriate speed... or similar style.

So.. I'm reading the Polo manual and it says you should go to 2nd gear 'as soon as you have moved off' and no more than 2000 rpm in each gear till reaching the desired running speed. This was a shock to my system. So I'm trying it and finding i have significantly better MPG (at least 10) with this same Polo than previously when I bought it and drove in my usual style. As the system can report live MPG I can see how low the MPG goes when pushing harder in lower gears only to find the engine has the torque to get me there in a higher gear with less fuel used.

To be fair to me.. (LOL) I don't think my old Mk1 escort 1100cc engine would do any of what this Polo does.. it only had four forward gears and you could never tootle around in 4th gear below 30mph.. it just didn't have the flexibility to do it. The Polo however will happily go down to 20mph or less in 5th and still pull away albeit gently.

So old dog, new trick. Loving the Polo TSi

[RUM4MO]

Most newer petrol engines, well at least these smaller ones with turbos, have completely different torque and power delivery, probably closer to TDIs than traditional petrol engines from the near past.

Even worse than the petrol engines from the near past is the sort of engine that you mention, ie the Ford Kent family, they tended to reach high max torque along with max power output at max revs, not very useful for a run of the mill small family car, I had a couple of Escort 1600 Ghias good enough cars, but on one bit of road I got to as soon as I left our village/town, was a steepish hill, with it reving its guts out in 2nd gear, quickly slipping it into 3rd ended up with it going flat and loosing speed forcing a return to 2nd gear - horrible way to have to drive.

I used to drive sort of sensibly most of the time while driving my wife's previous car a 2002 Polo 1.4 16V SE, that engine was a complete turd, picking that model over the 1.4FSI was a major error on my part, filling it up with expensive Shell UL+ improved low end drivability a bit, and any small bit was a real bonus. Any attempt by me to refill it with ordinary petrol was met with much annoyance from my wife. At that time I drove a 2000 Passat 4Motion which means it had the strong but lazy Audi 2.8 30V V6 petrol engine, it was so easy to drive around in that, both cars mainly returned a constant MPG regardless how they were driven - within reason.

Our next cars are a 2011 Audi S4 and a 2015 Polo 1.2TSI 110PS, the S4 with 6MT always gave more MPG than the old Passat 4Motion did and its consumption could be improved by driving with a bit more thought when on motorways, the Polo also with 6MT is also so easy to drive and to achieve good MPG figures that I find myself maybe trying too hard to always get to where I am going quickly but still return excellent MPG figures, unfortunately this has lulled me into attempting to do the same with the S4 which can reach 38+MPG when out on rural roads and not collecting a convey!

I tend to have the MPG as one of the visible displays at all times when I am driving, and that annoys my wife, it is possibly a disease!!

[grazuncle2]

I agree with everything you say.. it wasn't a level playing field!

Also I had low expectations with this petrol Polo after a 1.4 TDI Polo that had really low rev torque (where you could go nearly to idle revs in 5th and still drive it away) but was still surprised with the flexibility of the TSI. However it is nice to get out of the way quickly with this petrol TSi and rev freely over 3000 rev, still with some punch, unlike the TDI which didn't like it much at all!

Yes the Kent engine was a poor thing for my Escort.(I don't know what engine was in the Mexico version LOL) Mine hardly ever started first time the winter despite new plugs, contact set , HT leads and decent compression in the four pots. I lived on a slight hill fortunately but a bit scary in winter trying to bump start the thing... My neighbour had a Triumph Acclaim which he NEVER serviced; he would get in it on really cold iced up days and it would start with the lightest of flick of the ignition. Makes you sick! So i bought one.

I too have the live mpg displayed all of the time... it was only after reading the driving tip in the Polo manual that made me go and cycle the display to 'avg mpg' to see what i had averaged since purchasing it. I then tried the recommendations and a couple of weeks later looked again -surprise surprise!

I also didn't know that this Polo has a GPF! I got away with the TDI not having a DPF as it was too old a model. I am only glad that my driving style is helping to keep GPF clear.. (well, according to the VW tech papers I read)

[Leif]

Yes I keep the revs down and I am getting about 67 mpg and above in the warmer weather (calculated from fuel in and miles covered). I sometimes block change from third to fifth, I don’t know if that is good or not for mpg. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s also worth keeping a good gap between you and the car ahead, it means less accelerating and braking, and better mpg, you also get better forward visibility. I find the engine is very sensitive to revs and speed, and a small change in driving style can give a significant improvement in mpg. Last year I had 70 mpg several times which I regard as remarkable for a good sized car, they really have made these engines efficient.

It reminds me of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh who flew military planes in WW2. He showed the military that the P38 Lightning aircraft could fly much further by running on lower revs than was usual.

[Stuart_Rendall]

I did a 400 mile all round trip to the Goodwood FOS yesterday and got 55mpg from my a tank in my GTI. These VW engines are genuinely surprising when hypermiling especially when i'm used to seeing highs of 35 down the lanes.

[Andy Beats]

Yes I keep the revs down and I am getting about 67 mpg and above in the warmer weather (calculated from fuel in and miles covered). I sometimes block change from third to fifth, I don’t know if that is good or not for mpg. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s also worth keeping a good gap between you and the car ahead, it means less accelerating and braking, and better mpg, you also get better forward visibility. I find the engine is very sensitive to revs and speed, and a small change in driving style can give a significant improvement in mpg. Last year I had 70 mpg several times which I regard as remarkable for a good sized car, they really have made these engines efficient.

It reminds me of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh who flew military planes in WW2. He showed the military that the P38 Lightning aircraft could fly much further by running on lower revs than was usual.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you guys must live somewhere very flat, so there's an argument that any car will return good MPG when it's able to go from 3rd to 5th on a light throttle and not bog down.
Where I live, going from third to fifth in a 95bhp TSi just isn't possible very often at all.
So I would say these engines can be very efficient, but only in conditions that allow it, they can be thirsty buggers in other conditions.
Well under 30mpg is perfectly feasible in the 95Tsi, and even under 20mpg if you hammer it.
Quite frankly, I thought that was pretty shocking for a 1.0 engine, I didn't think there should be any circumstances under which a small engine should guzzle fuel like that.

[Leif]

Yes I keep the revs down and I am getting about 67 mpg and above in the warmer weather (calculated from fuel in and miles covered). I sometimes block change from third to fifth, I don’t know if that is good or not for mpg. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s also worth keeping a good gap between you and the car ahead, it means less accelerating and braking, and better mpg, you also get better forward visibility. I find the engine is very sensitive to revs and speed, and a small change in driving style can give a significant improvement in mpg. Last year I had 70 mpg several times which I regard as remarkable for a good sized car, they really have made these engines efficient.

It reminds me of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh who flew military planes in WW2. He showed the military that the P38 Lightning aircraft could fly much further by running on lower revs than was usual.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you guys must live somewhere very flat, so there's an argument that any car will return good MPG when it's able to go from 3rd to 5th on a light throttle and not bog down.
Where I live, going from third to fifth in a 95bhp TSi just isn't possible very often at all.
So I would say these engines can be very efficient, but only in conditions that allow it, they can be thirsty buggers in other conditions.
Well under 30mpg is perfectly feasible in the 95Tsi, and even under 20mpg if you hammer it.
Quite frankly, I thought that was pretty shocking for a 1.0 engine, I didn't think there should be any circumstances under which a small engine should guzzle fuel like that.

My daily commute was 25 miles each way, with a series of hills, not the Cairngorms admittedly, but they’d exhaust a cyclist. I was getting high 60’s mpg. Basically going downhill, in gear, it was burning no fuel, compensating for the upward slog. In my experience the real killer is traffic jams, slow moving traffic, lots of lights, junctions and so on. Ideally you need to do 40 miles an hour, 60 and up hits the mpg badly. I’m a very very boring driver … The VW app will give an idea of driving style and efficiency.

[vc-10]

I don't think I've ever seen less than 30mpg except on *really* short trips- less than a mile sort of trips. I can't imagine the 115PS version is significantly more efficient than the 95! Thrashing it on some of the twistys in the Peaks... I was getting mid-to-high 30s. This is of course the car marking it's own homework, but still. I have the display on the 'from start' MPG setting, and on the short drive to my gym (I am *not* walking back after leg day!) I almost always get to 30mpg by a certain set of lights, which is 1100m from my house according to Google Maps.

Thrash these small engines and yes- they're not really any better than an NA engine. But most of the driving you do isn't thrashing it. Sitting on the motorway, a steady cruise, etc etc is where they really make a benefit. Because my commute is fairly long and mostly motorway, I'm averaging about 55mpg at the moment, although it's more like 50mpg in winter.

[Andy Beats]

The VW app will give an idea of driving style and efficiency.

On the 'blue circle' display, which I like the look of (much better than the grey 'sport display') I regularly get high 90s.