Gas mileage and range
 

What are you guys getting? I just got a 06 3i Touring and am only getting about 380 miles or 29 miles doing straight highway. Just curious if my 3 is mess somewhere.

a great site to compare your MPG and log your fuel usage can be found at:

www.brianbauer.org

developed by a fellow Mazda owner

I thought the same thing with my 06' hatch. With the 2.3L I get like 25 in the city. Which is pretty crappy given I drive alot. I don't think anything is wrong, the gas quotes are just a little higher than what the car actually gets.

I do about 40% freeway and 60% in town.

I average 21-24mpg

I did almost straight freeway (60mph) on a beach trip and got about 32mpg (best ever)
All freeway through the dessert(75-85) I got about 26mpg

I have the 2.3 with the Auto tranny.

mileage
 

i've been keeping track of my mileage with each filling. on the highway, doing about 70 mph, i get 34 mpg and i get 24 to 25 commuting, which is a mixed of city and highway. my 3 is a 2.3l 5-door manual. and i love it.

MPG results so far
 

So far, on three fillups, I've got 28.0, 27.0 and 27.8 mpg. My driving is about 80% highway so I don't think I'm going to get the 32 mpg highway rating but I'm not complaining; it's a good balance of performance/fuel economy. I have a hatch with manual tranny.

I just bought mine, so I'm only on my second tank, but I'd be pretty happy with the 28-29 MPG you guys are reporting. The sticker in the window of my 5-speed says 26 city / 32 highway, so that's right within the expected range.

one thing to consider is that, if you have the 2.3 engine (and I know the original poster meant the 2.0), you're talking about 160 horsepower and 150 ft/lb of torque. For the other vehicles in this class, nothing else has better mileage with the same horsepower except the base RSX at 2.0L and 34 MPG highway...and what the RSX gains with the smaller displacement engine, it loses in torque. Since my 5-door was about $2,000 cheaper than the RSX, it would be hard to complain about the 2 MPG difference.

2.3L is a pretty big 4 cylinder engine - up until very recently 1.6L or 1.8L was the norm...what you buy in torque, you pay for in gas mileage. It's debatable whether equivalent driving styles in the 2 vehicles I'm comparing would net the same mileage anyway, since a higher torque engine will provide adequate acceleration at a lower RPM.

if you want gas mileage first and foremost, you didn't buy the right car: the base Honda Civic has a 1.8L rated at 30 city / 40 highway (automatic), and the base Corolla has a 1.8L rated at 32 city / 41 highway (manual).

Milage
 

I've gotten as good as 33 (cruise set at 70 with a strong tailwind) and as low as 12...yes...12. We can thank boston traffic during the floods (major roads closed, made everything a mess traffic wise) of 2006. My 7.45 mile commute has taken me on average about 2 hours this past week.

For those of you who think that is a lot, back in December (when I still had my Jetta) I left my office at 2:00pm just as a freak snow storm struck...blizzard conditions....I didn't get home until 5:45. All those punks in the Porsche Cayane's and Mercedes SUV's did a fantastic job of stopping up traffic...not managing the smallest inclines on their massive 20" tires....all this leading up to the point where I actually had to stop and get gas on the commute.

With my jetta 2.0 I was getting around 26 city and as high as 36 highway...numbers I have yet to duplicate with the Mazda....for some reason I just can't keep my foot off the floor....that lovely little sound it makes from around 5500rpm to 7000rpm is just so alluring.

Gas Mileage
 

So far, I've gotten 27.6, 70/30 highway, 27.2 70/30 highway and the latest was 26.3 mostly highway, but at 75-85, with four adults onboard. Mine is a 2005, 5 door, auto trans. My son gets 24 in his Grand Prix GT, which isn't a bad car, but not as fun as our Mazdas.

I just wanna know what the hell is wrong with getting 29mpg ???

I have a 70 mile daily highway round trip commute and routinley get 28 MPG

First tank, not exactly taking it easy and all suburban driving, I just got 24mpg with the 2.3/auto. I am very pleased, particularly since I've been driving it in a 'spirited' manner.

I came from a truck that got 10mpg in the same conditions...the difference in fuel cost will make up for half my car payment each month with my short daily commute alone.

I had 290 miles on the tank and it took 12gal. Running like a top on the cheap gas too, even nicer.

We have a 2004 2.3L manual and we kept track since Feb. 2006 on almost every filling. Our best mileage so far is 34.4 and worst is 17.9. I don't have it on a spread sheet yet so I can't give you the average. Most of my driving is commuting with a mix of highway, city and some fun curvy roads, and the numbers are most often in the 24-28 range.

How you drive makes a big difference in gas mileage. My wife gets better gas mileage than I do because she's not as much of a lead-foot. On a recent highway trip we got a consistent 32-33 mpg. I was careful not to accelerate fast and used cruise control as much as possible, and I was doing about 70 almost the whole way. Going easy on the accelarator makes a difference. But of course acceleration is part of the reason we got this car, right?

lol... and i thought i was doing good with 26miles to the gallon...

hmm, i have a new 07 speed3 and with giving it a lot of gas at times i got 23 mpg the other night! i don't think thats to bad for a speed3?