It's always nice to find a new place for bragging!
I have had my 1975 Saab 96 V4 "Phantom Blot" ("Spökplumpen" in swedish, after the Disney character) four or five years now. It's an old beaten piece of junk actually, full of rusty holes and hand painted black all over, even covering the crome details. I have replaced the engine two or three times over the years, but I now seems to have a piece of gold instead of cast iron.
When I started driving this car, my fuel consumption as well as driving style were quite average, but then a very interesting exploration ito ecodriving started. I've learned about Brake Specifik Fuel Consuption charts and why there is a narrow "sweet-spot" for most piston engines. I've also learned hos to stay withing this spot as much as possible by practising "Burn & Glide", "Burn & Coast", "Pulse & Glide" or whatever people call this crazy driving style. This together with a bit lowered speed, "Driving Without Brakes" and engine shutdown while coasting have given quite some results!
For this entire summer I have mostly kept my 40 year old carburettet piece of junk around 50 mpg (US) = 4,6 litres per 100 km. This is about HALF of what some Saab owners are more familiar with, but most Saab 96 owners average out somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
Here's my fuel log:
1975 Saab 96 V4 Gas Mileage (Phantom Blot (Spökplumpen in swedish)) - EcoModder.com
My usual driving goes mostly in the countryside and rural areas where I'm quite alone and don't upset traffic with my crazy "yo-yo" driving. I often cross the heart of Stockholm, the capitol of Sweden, sometimes during rush hour. If I have to travel on highway and adapt my driving to other cars, my fantasticly low fuel efficiency will fail abruptly. If a lot more drivers started practising this amazing style of driving it would be chaos in the streets I suppose.
My basic principles are:
Never burn more fuel than is actually needed to take you to the next point of descissions. -If you are planning to do a sharp turn in a crossing or see a high probability for a traffic light to go red, adapt your burn-cycle to this and hope for the best. Shut off the engine as soon as the burn-cycle have given you the speed you aimed for.
The brake pedal is for emergency and other unpredicted traffic situations only. If you need to use the brakes for other than keeping the car steady in a slope while waiting for green light, your planning have failed. The expensive fuel is used for getting you where you want to go, all the brakes do is to throw all that away by converting forward motion to heat.
All other cars, pedestrians and bikers are only there to interrupt your flow. If they see a chance to a sabotage, they will take that chanse. Your misssion is to make them fail. By becomming super-observant you can often think ahead of these terrorists and manage to slip through. In city traffic, it's not uncommon to pass the same stressed and agressiv BMW owner several times, without using the throttle or brakes much at all. -It's all about keeping the eyes open, "read" the traffic and make clever descicions, and that works so amazingly well!
I'm quite heavy on my right foot actually, and other drivers sometimes see me disappear in front of them. Then it all changes as I'm through with my burn-cycles and shuts down my engine to coast. Most other drivers keep accelerating to pass me, despite the fact that they are appproaching a traffic light that is already red... It's not uncommon that I'm well prepared for this and can change lane early enough to pass by those braking succers, and repeat this time after time...
I have a big green sign in my rear window, bragging about my best fuel efficiency result ever, 4,3 litres / 100 km, but there's also a warning/ explanation to my driving style that can be read while driving slow.
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