2016 Nissan Versa SV Fuel Mileage Update

Ultimate handling of my Mazda was mediocre even by 1980 small-car standards. However, its manual steering "feel" in normal sedate driving was way better than that of the electric power steering I have now. Braking feel (i.e., linearity) was far better than the Prius's too, although the latter probably can stop shorter in an emergency, thanks to ABS.

 

Yes , the Mazda GLC steering was the benchmark , for me , until I got the Civic Si.
Not that the Honda was much better , but I drove it a lot longer then the Mazda ( 14 vs 8 yrs ).

 

That's an interesting source of recommendation for drivers' choice 'award'.

 

Oh reliable/affordable (and if need be, repairable) Japanese import of the 80's, .. how do I miss thee? --- Let me count the ways:
-- super light weight -- easy on tires/suspension and everything else
-- simple engine (no DI, no high pressure fuel pump, no turbocharger, no hybridization ...)
-- simple transmission (no CVT, no DCT, no many speed automatic, .. maybe no automatic at all)
-- simple or no SRS
-- no complications with ABS, EBS, LKA, ACC ....
-- no infotainment
-- relatively simple emmissions control
-- nice thick engine oil (not 0W-20) that keeps the engine lubricated, and the oil and gas seperated
-- etc.. etc...


/-- oh yeah, ... we were younger then. Diamonds and rust and all that.

 

I never owned a Mazda car but, I did own an '84 Mazda B2000 pickup that I bought new. It was a good driver for what it was but, the body sure didn't last. In just a few years of ownership with better than average care taken of the body it had spots that were rusted completely through with a hole on the passengers side right below the bottom corner of the windshield that was larger than a softball and this was the second time it had rusted through in that spot. I had the original metal cut out and new welded in for the same reason when I had it repainted. Maybe it was just the truck I got but, it turned me against Mazda's pretty quickly. When I quit driving it with 1xx,xxx miles the body was shot and and it had a blown head gasket. Ever since owning the B2000 I haven't even looked at a Mazda's when I've been in the market for another car.

Even the '88 Escort that went 518K miles over a 24-25 year time span only had one small hole rusted through about the size of a quarter and it was driven on dusty/dirty/muddy construction sites nearly everyday from new until it was about 12 years old and seldom got a washing much less waxed. The Escort has been sitting now with no care at all of the body for I guess 7 or 8 years and the body on it is still solid except for that one hole. In all those miles the head was never off of it for anything and the only reason the oil pan was ever off was to replace the pan gasket and clean the screen in the oil pump while I had the pan off.

 

Yeah, the longshoremen are pretty good drivers. Most of the time the bosses liked their "production"..... hustling onto the Car Ships, unstrapping cars from their stationary Car Ship positions after crossing the oceans AND driving through the nooks & crannies of the ship innards, onto the dock ramps, across the docks & to the parking lots, sometimes a half-mile to a mile from the Car Ships. Sometimes the longshore gangs were very young AND sometimes they got to drive Mazda RX-8's. Not to say they were racing, but plenty of RX-8's got to parking lots faster than ALL other vehicles. Sometimes bosses had to..... "slow down production".

 

First 10K mile stats. Officially tracked 10048.2 miles, gas used 213.768 gallons, average MPG 47.005 MPG, 38.250% above 34 MPG combined EPA rating, total fuel cost $480.77, money saved $183.90 based on average cost per gallon, fuel cost per mile $ .0478, gallons saved vs. EPA combined rating of 34 MPG 81.767 gallons, 2780.1 free miles vs. EPA combined rating. I'm needing some warmer/dryer weather so I can keep my average above 47 MPG.

 

Thanks Bill. I'm expecting average MPG to drop below 47 on this next tank. They're forecasting wet and cold for the next several days. Between the wet, cold and then windy conditions that will come with March I just don't see anyway to keep the average above 47 till warmer weather sets in. Hopefully I learned a little more about how to drive the car for mileage over the winter and can get some better mileage once spring/summer roll around. If I can maintain a 46.5-47.5 MPG average year around I won't be complaining.

 

Excellently done, even through the winter!! Who needs them there "steenkin' hybrids"?

 

Decided I needed to add one more stat since most of my driving is rural 2 and 4 lane roads with maybe 10-15% small town/city driving. I'm at 20.526% above the EPA highway rating of 39MPG.

 

I bet you'd get 25+% over EPA city marks, if you drove 90+% in the city.

 

Actually 10K miles worked out at almost exactly 1 year. First fill up was 02/13/19, last fill up was 02/25/20. I would like to drive a hybrid just one time to see what kind of mileage I could get out of one. Of course I'd probably need to drive it more than once, I'm sure they're like any other car you have to learn how to drive them for best mileage. When I got the Versa and the first tank was 42.345 MPG I was pretty sure that mileage could be beat but I never expected to have my best tank to date at 51.296 MPG just 3 months later.

 

I bet you can drive the CVT Versa, so the transmission lasts a long time, too.

 

I hope so but, I still plan to do fluid filter changes approximately every 30K miles. Early on I noticed with the c/c set that the RPM's increased drastically on even short but steep grades. I thought this can't be good for that transmission so I watch for steeper grades. If I see one coming I'll shut the c/c off and manually feed the gas. By doing this I can often keep the speed within a couple MPH or even the speed I had the c/c set at and the RPM's within 100-500 RPM of cruising RPM. Letting the c/c feed the gas I'd often see sudden increases of 1500-2500 RPM. This tells me there were some drastic ratio changes happening very suddenly. Just seemed to me this was likely to cause excessive wear on the engine, transmission and especially the fuel gauge. It sounded like that little engine was going to fly out from under the hood.

 

Maybe so but I've noticed on the Ultra Gauge this car doesn't like slow speeds. I've never really set c/c to find out but watching the Ultra Gauge readings it seems the car gets better mileage at 45MPH than at any lower speed. It seems like right around 45 MPH is the sweet spot for mileage. I'm seldom in a hurry to get where I'm going so lots of my driving is around 50 MPH on better roads and about 45 MPH on the secondary roads because we have lots of deer in this area. There are few days that go by that I don't see at least 1 deer laying dead on the side of the road. My wife works about 11 miles from the house and when I pick her up every night it's not uncommon to see at least 1 deer and sometimes 3 or 4.

 

Now, I drive somewhat like you do. Years ago I was driving a narrow valley Colorado highway, which split two mountain ranges. The deer often used the highway for passage, so there were DOZENS OF DEAD DEER, along that route.... so many dead deer the state DOT couldn't keep up with the death toll.

 

I had a Dodge Caliber with Nissan CVT. It had a manual LOW setting on the CVT for quicker acceleration, or to ease up those steep hills. It worked well on mountain slopes, too. Of course, the rpms are higher, but not as high as the uncontrolled rpms of the "HIGH" setting on steep slopes, while in CC. I met 3 Dodge Caliber drivers that had 180,000 to 230,000 miles on their cars, with no problem from the Nissan CVT. But, I live in Washington state that has less heat than more southern states.

 

I've never tried the "L" gear/setting on the CVT. We have pretty warm weather here often in the mid/lower 90's during the summer but, nearly all my driving in this car is going to be shorter trips of less than 50 miles and most less than 25 so this should help keep the transmission temperatures under control. Unlike the older Nissan CVT's this one has a water cooled transmission cooler on it and the engine has a 180* thermostat which keeps the coolant temperature around 183 during 90-95* weather. Longest trip I've made in it thus far was soon after I bought when we used it on a trip that was approximately 250 miles over the course of a day. Most of the time if I'm making a longer trip I'll be using my '97 Ford Escort with 40K miles and a 5 speed manual transmission. As soon as the weather breaks I've got to put a new timing belt on it. I bought the Escort new and it's still got the original timing belt. I'd rather spend a half day replacing the belt than to be on a trip 500 miles from home and have it break leaving us stranded, having to pay possibly a few hundred dollars to get towed in and paying someone several hundred dollars to replace the belt.