Am I crazy for wanting a rig that gets low 20's mpg ???
- Thread starter swrider
- Start date
Martinjmpr
Wiffleball Batter
All these new vehicles are great but is your objective to save fuel or to save money?
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If the objective is to save money, you might want to reconsider what buying a $30 - $40k vehicle is going to do to your cash flow. Unless you can put a big down payment when you buy you may be looking at monthly payments of over $500 or even close to $1000. You can buy a LOT of gas with that money, and consider this: you only buy gas when you travel but once you are locked into that payment you are making it every month whether you are using the vehicle or not.
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If the objective is to save money, you might want to reconsider what buying a $30 - $40k vehicle is going to do to your cash flow. Unless you can put a big down payment when you buy you may be looking at monthly payments of over $500 or even close to $1000. You can buy a LOT of gas with that money, and consider this: you only buy gas when you travel but once you are locked into that payment you are making it every month whether you are using the vehicle or not.
XJLI
Adventurer
I thought about that too. I'd like to get one more cross country trip in with my fiancé before we really settle down and can't take that much time off. My thought was buy a new (or newer) truck, and set off... Or I can just take my current fuel hog of a truck and not plunk down a payment on a new truck and use whatever I'd have in the bank for fuel instead.
Say the trip is 7500 miles total. I doubt it would be that much but anyway...
7500 miles / 16 MPG x $3/gal (premium) = just over $1400 in fuel. I spent MUCH more than that on my cross country trip in 2010 when I paid almost $5/gal for regular in socal, averaging about the same fuel mileage.
It's really the mileage around town/commuting that gets me... I only get 10-11 MPG in more than half of my driving. But even with a newer truck, that number won't be as significant as a jump as the highway MPG improvement.
Vandy
Adventurer
I'd look harder into a 2500 4x4 diesel ram. They might get better mpgs than you think. I'd look for a 5.9 manual. Highway stock rubber and a good tune you will be over 20.
My dd is an 08 6.7 3500 4x4 drw on 37inch mud tires. I get 17 ish around town. The few all highway trips I've taken. Cruise set at 70 and I'm pushing 21. The cummins is a very fuel efficient set up.
The 5.9s can also be run on wvo.
There is also the new nissan titan with a 5L cummins on the way
My dd is an 08 6.7 3500 4x4 drw on 37inch mud tires. I get 17 ish around town. The few all highway trips I've taken. Cruise set at 70 and I'm pushing 21. The cummins is a very fuel efficient set up.
The 5.9s can also be run on wvo.
There is also the new nissan titan with a 5L cummins on the way
Martinjmpr
Wiffleball Batter
If it's the around-town MPG that's killing you, is a 2nd vehicle an option? That's exactly what I did. My gas guzzling (relatively) 4runner sits at home and my current DD is a 1996 Mazda B2300 (AKA Ford Ranger) that gets 24 - 25 MPG pretty consistently. 2.3l 4 cyl, 5 speed and the AC is ice cold. Cost me $2000 in 2013 and the only money I've put into it is a $200 CL topper (color matched, no less!) and a $135 Crutchfield stereo. Also great when I want to pick up some bags of bark or an old table and don't want to risk the nicer interior of the 4runner.
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Previous DD was a 1997 Mazda Protégé sedan with a 1.5 and a 5 speed that could get 32 MPG all day and 38 if I was on the highway. I paid $900 for that car and put a new (used) engine in it for about $2300 a year later so my total investment was still well under $4k.
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Depending on where you live it could be easy to find a 10 - 15 year old Honda, Toyota or similar compact car that will get you 30mpg easily. Of course, if you live in states where they salt the roads, finding an older car in decent condition may be tougher to do. It's pretty easy here in Denver.
Martinjmpr
Wiffleball Batter
Finding an "Overlander" that gets 20 - 24 MPG on the highway is not that difficult. There are lots of them out there with ratings in that range. Hell the newer Suburbans I believe are rated at 14/21 or something!
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What's tough is finding an "overlander" that will still get that MPG after you put on:
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* Those 33" AT tires
* The 2" lift you needed in order to mount the 33" tires
* The +80lb winch bumper with the 70lb winch
* The airflow-destroying roof rack and lights and
* The 200lbs of Zombie Apocalypse gear you carry around in it.
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That's the nut that's tough to crack. One of the reasons I'm losing my affection for my "mid sized" 4runner is that while they can turn in impressive MPG numbers in bone-stock form with street-slick tires and no gear, once you start loading them up that advantage often disappears and what you are left with is a vehicle that is both underpowered AND gets poor MPG - the worst of both worlds (the power of a 4 cyl and the fuel economy of a V8.)
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I'm starting to think that if I started with a full size vehicle, my initial MPG might be lower but my MPG after some mods would likely not take a nosedive quite as far as they do with a compact/midsize vehicle.
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What's tough is finding an "overlander" that will still get that MPG after you put on:
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* Those 33" AT tires
* The 2" lift you needed in order to mount the 33" tires
* The +80lb winch bumper with the 70lb winch
* The airflow-destroying roof rack and lights and
* The 200lbs of Zombie Apocalypse gear you carry around in it.
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That's the nut that's tough to crack. One of the reasons I'm losing my affection for my "mid sized" 4runner is that while they can turn in impressive MPG numbers in bone-stock form with street-slick tires and no gear, once you start loading them up that advantage often disappears and what you are left with is a vehicle that is both underpowered AND gets poor MPG - the worst of both worlds (the power of a 4 cyl and the fuel economy of a V8.)
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I'm starting to think that if I started with a full size vehicle, my initial MPG might be lower but my MPG after some mods would likely not take a nosedive quite as far as they do with a compact/midsize vehicle.
calicamper
Expedition Leader
My take is that if you want good highway mileage and also lots of gear toting ability you need a full sized pickup which you keep as clean as possible on the exterior and load all your not so clean gear in the back under a sleek cap. As you pointed out start adding big aggressive tread tires, racks and no so sleek bumpers etc the mileage options start to tank.
I think it really comes down to do you really need those big knarly tires? And just how much of the bumpers and racks do you really use or need? And consider how many high speed highway miles your covering be realistic about the mileage covered vs whats really needed for the other end when you hit dirt road etc. As a kid my dad would pack us into mom's VW Dasher 5spd Diesel dog non turbo slow as molassas thing for our back country back packing trips. We would have 3-4 + backpacking gear stuffed in that car drive 4-5hrs then hit logging roads for another 30-60 minutes park at the trail head and hit the trail for a week or two. Then return home all on a single tank of diesel seeing 40-50mpg averages! He could have easily loaded us into the E250 conversion van and done the trip at 10mpg but the little VW easily did the trip just fine a tad slow on some of the climbs maybe but hell one tank of diesel for a two week trip was worth it.
The OP has been using a micro car up till this point. Even my 2010 OB would be a massive step up in space, gear capability and trail ability over his GTI. I have a 1.8T Jetta its been ours since new in 2001 we used my 2001 Legacy GT Limited for all our big trips because the VW was so small and lacked AWD. We replaced the old Legacy with the larger new 2010 OB for the space given kids were in the mix at that point. I own a Sequoia too and we rarely ever take it on trips unless we have 5+ butts in seats and need the space given the Subaru easily gets it done and in a much more efficient and enjoyable manner than the truck does even with two kids strapped into seats behind the front row.
My curiosity is around what happens with the Midsized truck game - if we start to see midsized 4dr trucks offering nearly as good mileage as my Subaru and getting 5 star crash ratings its going to be a hard sell for me to not replace the Subaru with one of those new midsized truck for better hauling capability beefier cooling capacity and better off road clearance etc.
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XJLI
Adventurer
Cant fit a third car where I am currently, and I hate the idea of a boring beater. I even had a brand new 2012 VW Golf 5 spd and I didn't enjoy driving it, and I drove my huge Jeep that I had at the time almost as much. If I do end up with a car in addition to my truck, it would have to be something fun... Then I'd feel weird DDing something when my truck is pretty much stock, and I'd have a DD so I could take time to mod the truck more. You can see where I'm going with this lol. I'm not ready to start pumping more money out of my pocket just yet... My commute also isn't long enough for a gas sipper DD to be effective.
XJLI
Adventurer
This is what I want. Bring me a new Ranger 4 door diesel.
calicamper
Expedition Leader
X - if the Ranger Wild trek 6spd MT 4dr 3.2 were to hit the US shores it will be the first vehicle I've camped out against the dealers door for and the First possibly only Ford product I will have ever bought new. My last Ford was a 89 XLT 2.9L short bed 2wd Ranger I bought used 100,000 miles on it in my second year of college. I sold it a year after I graduated for $1000 less than I paid for it and it had 280,000 miles on it! Never had any issues with it other than the lame At pump housing Oring seal failure which was a fairly cheap fix $200 but a big pain in the ***! I'd be all over the Wild Trek 6spd MT 4dr in a nano second.
Martinjmpr
Wiffleball Batter
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As I said in another thread, I'd guess that mid sized BOF trucks will disappear along with mid-sized BOF SUVs.
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The reason I see no future for compact trucks is because auto manufacturers seem to be devoting their energies to squeezing more MPGs out of full size trucks. Once you've gotten 20-29 MPG (so they say - color me skeptical) out of the likes of an F-150 or a RAM, where is the justification for a 25mpg compact? Where does it fit into the market?
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The only way to make a "compact" truck viable in the market is to either make it super cheap (which cannibalizes sales from your more expensive line of full size trucks) or give it really good MPG - like on the order of 35-45 MPG. And with current technology, it's virtually impossible to do that with a BOF, inline engine design like the Tacoma.
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No, the only way to keep the "mid sized" segment viable is to replace the current crop of BOF trucks with car-based unibody "trucklets" similar to the Dodge Rampage, VW Rabbit Pickup or Subaru Baja. The problem there should be obvious: All three of those attempts were miserable failures, sales-wise. (it should be pointed out that all three were also sold at a time when there was a thriving mid-sized pickup market, so it's possible that with mid-sized pickups gone, the "compact car-pickup" might gain traction.)
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Interestingly, there's one non-failure among the car-based-unibody truck platforms: The Honda Ridgeline. Not that the Ridgeline is burning up the sales floors, but it is apparently selling well enough that Honda has signed up for a refreshed generation. Honda is a shrewd company and they wouldn't do that if they thought it was likely to be a sales flop.
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So, to the extent that the "mid sized pickup" does survive, it will be the same way that the "mid sized SUV" survives, i.e. by ditching its BOF design in favor of a car-based FWD unibody platform.
Not a new design, just a new application. The engine and transmission have been used in Europe for many years.
I have the jeep setup and have had no problems in 23k miles. Most users have had no issues.