Several Vehicles fail to live up to expectations

It’s something new car drivers have probably noticed. Why is the advertised fuel consumption on new vehicles unobtainable in real-world conditions? Now UKs What Car? magazine has concluded, after testing various models, that official figures for combined fuel consumption are often significantly lower than true-to-life targets. Combined figures are a combination of Urban and City driving. Some of the worst “offenders” were VW models.

The magazine refers to the Volkswagen Up High 1.0 which has a claimed figure of 60.1 mpg but which falls at 46.9mpg in real-world conditions. Likewise the Volkswagen Polo 1.2 Match which has an actual figure of 39.5mpg despite the publicised figure of 51.4mpg. Other brands are mentioned: The BMW X1 2.0d S Drive is quoted at 62.8mpg but returns 50.8mpg and the Mini Cooper S returns 40.2mpg on the roads but the claimed figure was 48.0mpg. At the other end of the scale What Car? said there were two vehicles which performed better than advertised in the real world: the  Ford S-Max 2.0 TDCI Duratorq Titanium X Sport at 47.7mpg, better than the advertised 47 mpg and the Peugeot 5008 2.0 FAP HDI Allure which returned 51.5mpg – marginally higher than advertised.

The conclusion from all this is to take official figures with a grain of salt when buying, and remember, used cars will rarely match to published figures anyway because cars tend to become less economical as they age.