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Comment by vlucas | Hacker News Reader

I have a 2016 Ford Mustang GT/CS and consistently get 23-24 MPG with mostly highway/freeway driving. It's unreal that a 5.0L V8 with 435HP (stock) gets that good gas mileage. The materials and fit & finish is better all around too.

We are truly living in the middle of another "golden age" of automobiles. Watch out though - here come the EVs :)

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24 MPG is embarrassingly bad. A 1970s Datsun 240Z gets the same fuel economy. Compared to a modern luxury car, a new BMW 3 Series will get 80 MPG on a freeway. There's nothing wrong with buying a gorgeous car like yours, there are plenty of reasons to have one, but trying to claim it's environmentally friendly is just ridiculous.

Which BMW 3 series gets 80mpg?

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2017_BMW_3_Series.sh...

Are you talking about the i8?

Whoa there. I never said it was "environmentally friendly". That is indeed ridiculous. Just saying that for the amount of power it has, it gets better than expected gas mileage.

Also, it looks like a 1970s Datsun 240Z averages significantly worse: http://www.fuelly.com/car/datsun/240z/1973 - further proving my point, and the one of the article in question.

Now if they could just work on making those cars quieter. So they don't deafen me when I'm trying to enjoy a nice day with the windows down.

You don't buy a 5 liter V8 to be quiet.

I'm the guy in the car over wanting it to be quiet. I'm saying I find those cars extremely annoying.

We get spoiled a bit by how amazing noise suppression in modern vehicles is. A modern car rolling 60 MPH down the highway makes almost no engine noise, it's all aerodynamic whoosh and tire noise. Pretty impressive for a machine that's creating several thousand tiny explosions per second.

Actually, assuming about 2000 RPM at 60 mph in a 4 cylinder car you are getting more like 17 detonations/second

Shame on me! Mixed up my units.

Note that we haven't accounted for _n_ cylinders either. For a 4 cylinder engine you'd average ~67/second. :)

2000 / 60 seconds * 4 cylinders ~ 133 detonations/second.

Maybe in a 4cyl 2-stroke! In 4-stroke engines, a cylinder will fire once every other rev.

I'm more annoyed by the ridiculous "mufflers" kids seem to think are a good idea.

I think it's posing in the extreme. I recently got an SV650, and no matter what pipe you put on the thing, it's just not going to sound like a Harley or Busa or whatever. Mildly disappointing but then again, if I tried to get it to sound like a bigger bike, I'm kinda just lying.

Nothing amuses me more than a riced out camry with a glasshatter pipe hitting high revs and then just kinda putting off the line. All bark no bite.

> I think it's posing in the extreme >Nothing amuses me more than a riced out camry with a glasshatter pipe hitting high revs and then just kinda putting off the line. All bark no bite.

Yep

shrug you can't always get what you want, man. If he's tearing up and down your local neighborhood street that's one thing, but it's hard to feel sympathy for someone annoyed by a loud car when its out and about among hundreds of other cars.

Can't you just roll the window up till he's gone? It's not like it's hard to avoid a loud car.

First, what do hundreds of quiet cars have to do with one really annoying muscle car that likes to rev their engine at stop lights to show how cool they are?

Second, how do I know that I need to roll my window up when I arrive at that stop light?

Third, it takes about 10 seconds to roll all of my windows up. By that time my ears are already ringing.

Sorry, I had a car pull up beside me yesterday under a bridge and rev their engine. My ears are still ringing.

shrug, guess I can't always can't always get what I want.

If it's too loud, you can always call in with his plate. Enough reports and he can get ticketed for an illegal muffler. Happened to a buddy of mine back in Texas, and he totally had it coming.

Actually, the stock setup on the 2015-2017 models is pretty tame/quiet. Most of the super loud cars are after market exhaust/mufflers.

On the other hand, I drove a VW Passat 2.0TDI Bluemotion over last weekend - did 450 miles and averaged.....60mpg. That's insane.

I mean, I'm super happy that my 2.0L petrol 381bhp beast gets 30mpg on the motorway, but we can still do a lot better.

Was that with or without the defeat device though?

It was a brand new 2017 model, rental car - so I suspect not, but who knows what they are doing internally.

You can't compare diesel and petrol cars on a fuel-volumetric basis. You have to use mass because diesel is more dense. There is 15% more fuel in a gallon of diesel than in a gallon of petrol.

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