"Pete C" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 18:57:30 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
babbled away :

In article ,
Pete C wrote:
See this real life test, quotes 58mpg over the first 1000 miles:

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/road_tests/?id=135

IMO you've spent so much time replying to DIMM you've started thinking
exactly the same way...

Sigh. You really need to read Autocar to understand their philosophy.
They're not sensational journalists like 'honest john'.

LOL!

They're one of the
last remaining car magazines who try to be fair and objective.

LOL! Full of advertorials.

However, here goes again. On each *full* road test they give the
government urban and combined figures. They also give their actual figure
for their *entire* test.

Then a figure for their standard test route which is a mixture of
suburban
type high streets with moderate traffic and suburban dual carriageways
with a speed limit of 40 or so. They're based in Teddington, so it
doesn't
involve central London traffic jams.

Right, so it's not stop start town/city driving then. In that case
their testing isn't much use to people who drive in those conditions.

They do this because it gives a reasonable comparison between all cars as
submitted for testing. Cars submitted for government testing might well
be
fiddled to improve their economy at the expense of performance. Since
Autocar also check the performance, and many will buy on this, it would
be
a stupid maker who would try this trick on them.

Their *overall* test figure may well be on the low side against what most
drivers will get, because it includes testing for top speed and timed
acceleration runs. And the Prius was truly poor at 23 mpg.

At long last! Some context! Those whose driving includes top speed and
timed acceleration may want to look elsewhere then.

LOL, yep.

As it is when
driving at 70 mph on a long motorway journey - it's much worse than a
equivalent performance diesel.

Of course, it's a town/city car not a touring car.

It tours very well and very economically and doesn't pollute like mad and is
very quiet.

Had it been designed for real economy, it would have used a diesel rather
than petrol engine. But it was designed for certain parts of the US
market
where petrol is cheap and diesel not popular. And near zero pollution at
the point of use in city centres.

Don't forget the Japanese market, where they have big problems with
pollution in cities. I think diesel hybrids will appear when the
hybrid bit gets cheaper.

GM are bringing out an Astra version this year.

It's merely a curiosity in the UK. Just how many do you see on the roads?
If it was so wonderful, there'd be many thousands.

There are waiting lists because they are in short supply.

Oh - it also has rather high depreciation. It's quoted as only retaining
50% of its cost after 3 years. Something like a VW Golf is 60%.

Rather high? Parkers say it has slower than average depreciation:

Yep. He made that up.


http://www.parkers.co.uk/choosing/ca...l_id=1173&page
=3

Also depreciation is only part of the whole picture.

Saving a fortune on petrol, congestion charges and parking adds up quick.