I went to a presentation by one of the designers of the "Urbee" (http://korecologic.com/). He had this clever info-graphic about a stagecoach powered by 8 horses. That coach worked well, but people wanted more horses, even if they didn't need them. So, the stagecoach had to get bigger so the 8 horses could pull the additional horses that weren't being used. Eventually, 8 horses was no longer enough to pull the over-sized coach with all the extra horses, so now you have 30 horses pulling around 100 unused horses . . . point being it is wasteful. Scangauge estimates my Mirage is only using about 22hp at 100km/h, if I recall correctly, and the old VW Bug had less than half the Mirage's hp and did ok.
It doesn't take much power to move a car down the highway. Power is only used for rapid acceleration, extreme top speed, or towing.
I agree with the above - my Mirage is every bit as good as the "old normal", and outperforms several of the cars I have driven (F-150, Dodge Omni, Olds Cutlass Ciera, Chevy Cavalier).
From Wikipedia, regarding the VW Bug: "During this post-war period, the Beetle had superior performance in its category with a top speed of 115 km/h (71 mph) and 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 27.5 seconds with fuel consumption of 6.7 l/100 km (36 mpg) for the standard 25 kW (34 hp) engine. This was far superior to the Citroën 2CV, which was aimed at a low speed/poor road rural peasant market, and Morris Minor, designed for a market with no motorways / freeways; it was even competitive with more advanced small city cars like the Austin Mini." So I guess it's all relative!
Last edited by Canoehead; 12-01-2015 at 11:22 AM.
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View my fuel log 2014 Mirage SE 1.2 manual: 45.0 mpg (US) ... 19.1 km/L ... 5.2 L/100 km ... 54.1 mpg (Imp)