Quote:
Originally Posted by dcrooks
The May (2008) issue of Car and Driver has a picture of a smart fortwo on the cover the same color as mine. Seems they don't know how to drive it as they observed 32 MPG and I have been getting an average of 40 MPG.
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C/D editors always drive the crap out of their test cars, without bias as to what it is. That's why they usually extract better performance numbers than other magazines. For them, I thought 32 mpg was pretty good. I've subscribed for 28 years and have come to see their mileage as the "worst case"; they usually see at best the EPA City numbers in their "all around" mpg rating. I always drive hard and have rarely ever seen numbers in my own cars that are as low as theirs.
Also, magazines use "press cars". A small fleet of cars is given to the press to review and they are passed around the media. These cars are beaten to death. That can't be good for reviews.
A few years ago I was in Ohio's Hocking Hills, where these guys like to test on the road. Their caravan of about 5 test cars and a couple of support SUVs pulled into the place I was having lunch. We were parked near them, and when we left could smell clutch permeating the air. So I can live with 32 mpg.
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