Evan’s Mazda Protege5 – 3 years in
Previously posted on September 11 at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evandodds/Blog/cns!1phaOgcvNsBxzvBN9Zpx1vbQ!189.entry
As of some time mid-July, I’ve now had my Mazda Protege5 for a bit over three years. Protege5 is a 4-door “sport-wagon”, roughly similar to the Mazda3 that’s now marketed in the same space. It’s been quite a good little car for me during the several years I made the 200+ mile drive from Charlotte, NC <-> Charleston, SC on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Now that I’m out in Seattle, I drive it a lot less.
Proof that I’m a crazy data-hound, I’ve actually been keeping mileage and fill-up records all the way back to 2002 when I first bought the car. Since mid-2002, I’ve spent about $2500 on gasoline fill-ups and I’ve made a total of 146 gas-station/fill-up stops for a total of 1555 gallons used. Average MPG during this 3+ year period was just a hair under 29mpg (averaged across all 45000 miles driven, both city and highway).
Not enough data for you? How about these charts. 
Costs of Fillups + Trending:
There are a couple of “low” spikes in this data because it wasn’t completely empty when I went to the gas station. Sure, I could plot the price/gallon without taking into account how much gas I actually pumped, but then I wouldn’t know the weighted cost of the gas I used. Oh, ok… fine.
Price/Gallon + Trending:
So that one should be nearly identical to the last chart, except it doesn’t take into account the variations in how much gas was pumped at each price. The interesting thing to note is that we see two pretty significant bumps: (1) my move to Seattle, where gas costs more than in the Carolinas and (2) The large price hikes in summer of 2005 due to Iraq, Katrina, etc. But it’s also interesting to notice that apart from these two large “hikes”, it is actually trending fairly consistently.
MPG Trending:
Ignore the big spike up then down in March. This was data from a non-fillup (I put in, say, 2 gallons or something and then later on did a complete fill-up — since the MPG data is trailing, it threw off the numbers).
This chart is the most interesting one to me. I had assumped that we’d see a drop-off over time in efficiency as the motor started to age, etc. I guess 45000 miles is still fairly new… but in fact, we’re actually seeing a slight INCREASE in gas mileage as time goes on. Perhaps it’s because I’m doing less highway driving now. The PR5 is not well-geared for 85-90mph highway driving (4000+ RPMs in 5th gear), so it tends to get more reliable numbers in consistent city driving and low-speed highway driving like the mess we have here in Seattle.
