One More Interesting Aspect of Corvette Mileage

One More Interesting Aspect of Corvette Mileage

I mentioned yesterday the good gas mileage the Corvette gets. I made another discovery as well on the trip back from Bend.

You are perhaps aware that gas mileage of most cars declines somewhat if the windows are open--and in some cases, enough that you actually get better mileage with your windows closed, and the air conditioning running.

I was driving with the top off the car, and I decided to find out if the "closed windows get better mileage" is true under these circumstances. Sure enough! The Corvette had an instantaneous gas mileage setting, which seems to sample fuel consumption every second.

When I had some dead flat sections of road (or at least, with the same apparent slope for miles on end), I did some experimenting. First I rolled down the driver's window--and I seem to have lost about .75 or 1.0 miles per gallon. Rolling down the passenger's window seemed to give almost the same amount of loss (which is not too surprising). It would appear that both windows down with the top off took me down about 1.5 miles per gallon. With the windows up, and the cruise control set at 68 mph, the instantaneous measure bounced around between about 29.5 and about 31.5. With the windows down, it was more like 27.4 to about 29.8.

I'm not sure what the mileage would have been like with the top on (since you can't really put it on and off while driving, unless you are incredibly stupid), but I suspect better.