Is there a significant difference (say, 5 mpg or higher) between the number of miles per gallon of gas that a mid-sized sedan gets (e.g., Ford Focus) and a standard-sized sedan (e.g., Mercury Cougar)?
I’m trying to make car rental reservations and I need to know what size car to go with. There’s only a $7 difference in rental rates between the two sizes, but if the larger size is going to waste a lot of gas, I want to know to avoid it.
Thanks!
Is this a vacation or a business trip or a family emergency? How many miles are you planning to drive?
Vacation, go with the bigger car, you’ll be more comfortable and have more power and you won’t be sitting in the focus going, I should have got the larger car.
Business trip, go with the bigger car, your clients will make a mental note if you drive up in a focus, and think nothing of it if you drive up in the bigger car.
Family Emergency, go with the bigger car, you’ll probably end up driving people around and you’ll have more room to haul the relatives and friends around in.
Depending on how many miles you are planning to drive,
Just from the airport to the hotel, and back, go with the bigger car, you won’t be using up that much gas anyway.
All over the place, go with the bigger car, you’ll be more comfortable.
It looks like I’m saying go with the bigger car for comfort and forget about the gas milage as there won’t be that big of a difference.
If you are really freaked out about it, you can find out the make, model and YEAR of the cars and go to vehix.com or some other car sales website and do a side by side comparison to see what the actual gas milage difference is, or not.
Just go online to the car companies who make the cars and get their estimated mileage ratings. There are many things besides overall size that affect mileage (engine size, efficiency, gearing, aerodynamics, etc.).
At a guess I would think these two cars would be fairly close on the mileage spectrum.
This is a vacation for just my brother and me – we’re going to drive from Seattle to Las Vegas. I think it’s about a 1400-mile trip in total, so we’ll be using a lot of gas. My ass, er- tolerance for physical discomfort, is a lot more accommodating than my budget, so I can deal with a smaller but more efficient car. But if, as you say, there’s not a big difference between car sizes…bigger car it is.
But thanks very much for the vehix.com site – I’ll check that out.
On preview – good idea, Whack-a-Mole. I’ll do that, too.
Most rental cars use the smallest or least powerful engines available.
My guess is that all rental cars would use regular gas. In my area, premium gas is 20 cents more per gallon than regular. This can add up to a big difference in cost. Keeping to the speed limit can also help your mileage. Rental companies also rent economy cars. Make sure they let you take the car out of state. You’ll probably spend more in rental fees than for gas. Book the rental through the web and you’ll probably get a better rate.
They always try to get you to take their insurance waiver. Check ahead of time to see if you are covered by your regular insurance.
You might want to sit in the model car you’re going to rent before you actually rent it. I made the mistake of renting a Ford Tauris once without doing this. The place to rest your left foot is in the wrong place and my leg cramped up after only an hour of driving.
Wow, what is the car rental industry coming to when a Focus is a “mid-sized sedan” and a Cougar is a “standard-sized sedan”? Is this “Rent-a-Wreck” with an old, mid-sized Cougar? The current Cougars are rather small, compact vehicles. Even a Taurus is only mid-sized. Keep in mind that rental companies’ sizes aren’t the same as EPA sizes (the sizes you see mentioned on the sticker, in magasines, everywhere but the car rental companies, it seems).
So, at 30MPG, 1400 miles is 46.7 gallons @ $2.00/gal = $93.40
Then at 24MPG (my full-sized V8), we use 58.3 gallons = $116.67
The difference is $23.27 from an ecomony car to a full-size, comfortable car. You’ll spend that on a few beers (if you’re so inclined).