From Honda to Mitzi am I doin the right thing?

[Rambaud]

And make sure the insurance quote is for a VR4, not a non-turbo V6. Also, it's likely to be an import, not a UK sourced car.

[giblet]

BUY IT!

I went from a 4th gen prelude with the 2.2 vtec to a facelift vr4. Prior to that all my old cars had been 1.6 honda engines the d16a6 and the zc. The VR-4 is a cracking car and you'll enjoy it despite it drinking like old georgie best

[ratboyab]

To be honest with the fuel consumption figures I'm suprised what some are saying. I've been a but annoyed with mine as in the past most people seem to be talking about averaging between 20 and 25mpg and I have a completely standard Legnum apart from boost guage and boost adjuster (which I think is set as standard) and I've only been averaging 18mpg going to work which is about 20 miles on the motorway and 10 miles of town and outer town / country lane driving and no matter how careful I drive I can't really get it about that, managed to nearly get 19mpg and also dropped to 17.5mpg once. 18mpg equates to 32miles to £10 (baseing fuel cost's on £1.25 per litre which is rediculously difficult to find now but wasn't just before xmas).

Before buying the car I was informed looking round the net that you can get 30+mpg on long journey's, well I travelled back from Birmingham to Gravesend, Kent, on a sunday when the roads were clear, using just motorways sitting at between 70 and 75mph all the way and hit no traffic except for the average speed camera's on the motorway which just made me sit continuously at 50mph for probably 10 - 20 miles. On that journey I managed 24.5mpg which I was a little happier, but not happy considering I had been told about 30+mpg. At 24.5mpg that equates to 43.5miles per £10 (based on £1.25 per litre).

These figures don't seem as bad when compared to what some people are saying but then there are a lot of seriously done-up cars on here. I had a Rover 75 with the 2.5 V6 auto engine a while ago and struggled to get above 30mpg average. It only had something like 187bhp against the 280bhp that these have but then it didn't have tip-tronic and constantly wanted to change down gears all the time whereas I'm driving this in tip-tronic to make it more economical, but one thing I discovered with the Rover was although I only used to average about 31mpg, I left Clacket's Lane services on the M25 once and reset the "average mpg" computer and once I was doing 70mph put the car into cruise control to maintain that speed and for about 6 miles it sat at well over 40mpg (from a 2.5l V6!) then I came up behind one car that was doing like 60mph and had to sit for a while to wait for a gap to pull out, a small gap appeard so I put my foot down to match the other cars speed and get past him then put it back into cruise control. The average mpg just before overtaking him for the last 6-7miles was 44mpg, after that 5 second burst it dropped to 36mpg! I lost 8mpg over a 7 mile period just for getting past 1 car. But all in all by the time I made it to work (over 40 miles later - all motorway driving) I managed to get that back up to 39.6mpg which for a 2.5l V6 very big and heavy saloon car (it was even longer than the legnum!) is frankly excellent.

My point is despite what some people say yes sitting at 60mph instead of 70mph does make a difference on economy but the main thing is how you get to that speed, harsh acceleration makes so much more difference than what speed you sit at. Another thing I noticed in the Legnum though which I'm looking more into now, I used to accelerate to join the motorway in 5th gear from say 40mph, and 5th doesn't really have much power at 40mph. When I've watched the boost guage whilst doing this the boost pressure is at like +0.2 whereas if I drop down to 4th to join the motorway although the revs are higher the boost pressure is at -0.2 to -0.5 whilst accelerating at the same rate so I'm thinking is this using less fuel as although reving higher the engine is under less pressure. I could be wrong but there is also a steep hill near me which the speed limit is 40mph and in 4th the pressure is at about +0.3 but if I drop to 3rd it's at -0.6 roughly (this is maintaining the speed going up the hill rather than accelerating). I don't know what other peoples views are on this but makes sense to me.