My Fabia has now done nearly 31000 miles and had a "software" update at its last service. And today in normal urban driving and a 14 mile commute to work my car passed 500 miles on a tank of 40 litres of Shell diesel without the fuel light coming on!!

Yaaaah!

First time ever when not being on a long run.

Its going to be difficult working out your mpg on the "M62 car park" It's a nightmare between Bradford and Leeds at times. I'm sure you will love you Fabia though.

Quick update: did a journey from Peterlee to Hartlepool, reached 75mpg.

I've had my (used) GreenLine for about two months now and driven some 4000 miles with. At first I was trying to drive very economical, attempting to wring every last mpg from the engine I possible could, resulting in 80 mpg on long runs, and even touching 85 on occasion. Now, more used to the car, I'm much more relaxed, mostly making 70mpg between every filling, even when not being lightfooted on the throttle.

Last weekend I had an interesting experience when going for a weekend trip. Going there, 275 miles, crossing tow mountains, car empty, mpg was 70. Going back, 300 miles (slightly different route), crossing three mountains, car fully loaded (500 lbs more), mpg was 75. Average speed for the journey was 37 mph going there and 44 going back. This tells me that the GreenLine mpg is very dependent on where (i.e. what roads) you drive. If you can cruise along at an even speed, mpg will soar. If you need to go uphill and downhill all the time and need to change gears accordingly, mpg will plummet.

As far as mpg goes, I'm quite happy with chosing the GreenLine. As far as driving comfort goes (i.e. more torque, uphill pulling power and less gear changes), the 1.6 TDI would probably have been a better choice. That said, I have no plans of switching cars any time soon. To me, mpg is what counts most.

It's interesting to compare mpg doing variants of the same journey.

But there are so many factors to consider. I found the most important are cruising speed, temperature and head winds.

Dsg ie auto makes life easier so has my vote.

It's interesting to compare mpg doing variants of the same journey.

But there are so many factors to consider. I found the most important are cruising speed, temperature and head winds.

You're right about so many factors affecting mpg, simply too many to count them all. Crusing speed is definetely high on the list, as I have noticed a considerable diiference in mpg when increasing or decreasing the set speed on my cruise control on sa stretch of motorway I drive regularly. Just a few mph or kmh more or less can make a big impact on the numbers. Add headwind, heavy rain, overtaking a few cars (not needing to but wanting to), and mpg drops like a stone.

While it is always fun to speculate, more often than not I'm clueless as to what it was "this time" that made my mpg turn out the way it turned out.