It's a conspiracy
 

Why is it that there is such a drastic increase in FE in about 2006-2010? The Mazda cx 5, a sub crossover gets better mileage than my corolla, it's not fair! all these hyper efficient cars came out, and buying a used car I feel like I am missing out. So, I naturally blame the government.

It actually is the governments fault.

The CAFE standards were finally set so the manufacturers had a reason to actually use some existing technology to get better mileage. Hold out a few more years, in 2025 54MPG is supposed to be the average car figure.

The real conspiracy is why does my 1984 suburban in stock configuration get nearly as good or better fuel economy than these 2008+ $40,000+ hybrid trucks?

It is funny - when this forum started, there were precious few new vehicles available in the North American market that got decent fuel economy. We could practically count them on one hand.

brucey - don't forget that 54 number is uncorrected. The actual EPA figure will be quite a bit less (in the 40's - don't remember exactly what).

But through market pressure on fuel prices, CAFE regs or fuel taxes (not gonna happen in the US), things are only going to continue getting more efficient.

If Government is one of the conspirators who are the others?

the FED
 

Yeah...
But those epa ratings on many of those cars are gamed... Look at some of these vehicles epa numbers and then their real world performance on the online fuel logs... So do better, many do worse... some do MUCH worse!!! Like the car I almost bought... I think it is mostly 3 things:
Aerodynamics
weight
better fuel injection systems (like DFCO)

oil pan 4- horsepower and emissions on them might be a little different.

Really the whole deal is that I bought a new car in 2005, so a week later was the time for the whole industry to increase its FE.

It's one of those rare conspiracies that are actually making life better by decreasing overall fuel consumption and therefore the price of gas. It is doing weird things to the used car market, though. Newer used cars that get great mileage are really hard to find at a decent price because the demand is so high, even though the brand new ones often get even better mileage for almost the same price.

Whoah whoah whoah now... hold on a second here...

Do you honestly expect me to believe that manufacturers try to entice people to buy the products they make by making them better year after year?