I totally agree - I've said this many times, fuel is no where near the biggest expense for most people when running a car. The amount of people who buy new cars justifying the purchase on a reduction in fuel consumption and/or a couple of VED bands reduction - throwing thousands away in immediate depreciation and possibly saddling themselves with new debt just for a small weekly "saving". It very rarely adds up.

People just don't want to admit to themselves that they *want* rather than *need* a new car.

Edited by SLO76 on 04/10/2018 at 00:05

Apologies for non-metric - I can't get used to kilometers per litre.

If you were truly metric, John, you would quote litres per 100km., but we'll let that pass. As I travel miles and buy fuel by the litre, I have switched to mpl instead of mpg. I can't remember when I last handled a gallon of anything except in a watering-can, so I can't see the point of wasting time converting to mpg. Anyway 10mpl is a simple and useful target = 45.5 mpg.

I monitor consumption as an indicator of things starting to go wrong in the engine, and also as a mild challenge, not to save money but to save fuel. Fuel is a finite resource, while money is artificial and a marginally less valuable replacement can always be found for it. For the same reason I don't bother to go out of my way to find fuel at a penny cheaper - tho I never buy on the M-way unless there is no alternative.

As a low mileage user-totally agree with this. Last weekend needed to drive 150 plus miles and stay overnight with some added little local journeys on the saturday and sunday-then back home on monday morning.

Topped up with £45 quids worth of unleaded yesterday which represented my petrol use on previous friday-tuesday.

If i had done my journeys by train-the train would either be unavailable, unusable, cancelled, unreliable and grossly expensive....and where i was in Dorset --there were only limited very expensive taxis. I suppose i could have hired a vehicle for the weekend --but that would have been silly money.

So a £45 petrol bill for an occasional weekend journey for 2 folk was a bargain!

Sadly, a lot of people only see the headline figures and don't care about how those figures are achieved. One of the reasons why I opted for my Civic 1.8 was because of its mechanical simplicity and good reputation. I don't care if the VED is more expensive or the fuel consumption is higher than average. Knowing that I won't have to worry about expensive turbochargers or suchlike is more important to me.

Interesting post

MPG sligtly relevant for me I do 15,000 miles a year. Taking 1.30 as the price per litre thats:-

• £3000 at 30mpg
• £2000 at 46mpg

So if I enjoyed the v6(I wish) version of my Superb II which does about 30mpg (possibly less!) and compared it to my 1.4tsi Superb which does about 46mpg(real life) then it would cost me £1k a year extra in petrol.

I'll class depreciation as £1k year (its more at the mo) as I paid just over £10k at 14 months and will throw away after 10 years use (I kept my last Superb 10 years)

Tyres can be significant though. Mine has 205/55/16 tyres that are lasting more than 35k miles and cost about £300 a set. So on average they will last two years which is £150/year.

However if I'd had a sporty version with larger wheels and ultra low profile tyres you'd be lucky to get 15k out of a set and lookng at a model I was interested in would cost £800 a set which is approx £800/year

Servicing (sorry John F ) at my mileage is about £400/year inc MOT, air con and brake fluid change

Repairs - none at all yet at over 4 years old/ 64,000 miles - but there will be soon lets estimate £400/year to cover brakes etc as the car wears

Then of course tax/insurance etc - rough estimate £500/year

Oil other than servicing - £0 thus far

So fuel is slightly important at 15,000 miles/ year but not as significant as you would originally think. - although If I treated myself to the v6 depreciaton , tyre costs, tax and insurance would be a lot higher.

Edited by Big John on 04/10/2018 at 20:55

I agree. This is the kind of insight I have to share with my peers.

I do ~25,000 miles a year so mpg does matter, which is why I drive a car with an efficient 3 cylinder engine giving over 60 mpg.

I suspect the average forum user age is over 100, so they don't drive many miles.

Its probably largely down to Parkinson's Law of Triviality. MPG figures are easy to understand, working out depreciation relatively less so.

According to Fuelly my car is currently averaging 46.6mpg since 2012 and I have spent over £8000 on petrol. Quickly topping up everything else I have spent on the car, including repairs, purchase price MOTs etc this come to around £6500.