I just got back from a 300 mile round trip to Mt. Rainier and averaged 34MPG. That includes traveling at 75mph on I-5.
It's still my parents car, but since it's been in my care I have replaced the
rear trailing arms that control toe. The bushings had worn out and the rear wheels had play. I also replaced a cracked
motor mount. Last week I fixed a massive coolant leak caused by a hole in one of the bypass hoses. The parts store couldn't find the right part, so I just used fuel line of the right diameter and fixed it for under $1. While searching for the coolant leak, I heard an intake leak and replaced the
air intake hose. The car lived half it's life in SoCal, and that caused much of the rubber to fail. My parents previously owned a 1996 Camry that didn't have any of these parts fail, likely because it lived in Oregon and wasn't subject to the sun and heat.
The car had a p0401 code that was resolved by replacing one of the
vacuum switching valves.
At around 200k miles, I replaced all 4 struts for my parents as the suspension was very wallowy. I've put maybe $400 into the car, and my parents have replaced the timing belt twice after snapping it.
Neutral has worse FE than using DFCO, but if I'm not planning to come to a stop or slow down, then I shift to neutral to extend out the distance I can coast.
I don't do this since I don't want to wear out an already old starter, and I want to be ready to move once the light turns green. I just want the car to go another year without problems before I sell it and buy my wife a Prius.