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I've been lusting after this car for about a year now, and finally found one that I could afford and that was equipped the way I wanted.

It's the alabaster silver with blue interior and the in dash GPS.

It had 96k miles on it when I picked it up, and a clean Carfax record for $9500 from a dealership. It's the first non-flood, non-salvage, '06 w/ GPS that I've seen for under $12k anywhere near my area. I had to drive 300 miles to get it, but for that kind of price, I figured it was worth it. :)

I've had the car for a week, and so far it's everything I had hoped for.

I have been trying to follow the hypermiling guide on this site to improve my mpg, and so far (admittedly I'm still getting used to driving it) I average about 42 mpg on the way to work (9 mile trip, 35-45 mph zones) with in town traffic and some short (less than 1 mile) stretches where I can set the cruise control. I did manage to average 52 mpg going to work at 4am when the roads were pretty empty and I barely had to stop at any lights because they were all green so I could leave the cruise on almost the whole way.

I get roughly 55mpg when traveling on the two lane highway with the cruise control set at 56mph. I like to take drives out in the country (rural Illinois), and this is where the fuel economy shines the most so far.

And I get about 42-46mpg on the interstate with the cruise set at 66mph.

I am extremely happy thus far with the fuel economy. I have not yet checked for tire pressure, so I may be able to squeeze some more mpg out of this baby yet. My previous car was a 2001 Mazda Protege, which is no slouch for fuel economy, so it's not like I'm raving over this car after having driven an SUV in the past.

I *love* the GPS and voice commands. It makes me feel like I'm driving a $30k vehicle to have a car talking to me and responding to commands. I'm probably just easily impressed. :)

Once I get used to the hypermiling techniques, I intend to see how much I can squeeze out of a whole tank of gas and report back. :)

Welcome to CleanMPG and Congrats on the purchase. That does sound like a great price. I haven't seen one under $10K before. Here is a great article by Tarabell specifically on the HCHII (http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1306) .

The link in my sig will point you to some other great articles here too.

What part of Illinois are you located in? I'm in the southern part and xcel is in the northern.

Good Luck!

Silver with blue interior and GPS? I think that was mine :D

Thanks for the links.. I've looked at several of the threads including Tarabell's to try to help me achieve the best FE I can.

I put air in the tires today. They were at around 30-32psi, and I increased to 40. The sidewalls said 44 was the max.

When I came home from work today, I got 46.3mpg even though I hit like six red lights on the way home. This was with the A/C on as well. I love this car! :)

I'm located in central IL near the University of IL.


@Sledge: I bought the car at a little dealership in Columbus, OH not in IL.. but that would be neat if I ran into the previous owner on these forums. :)

Welcome.

That psi bump will serve you well. 44 will add a bit more, and if your roads are pretty smooth you can keep your teeth.

I advise using your foot over the cruise control, if you want to get better mileage.
GL

Welcome to CleanMPG and Congrats on the purchase. That does sound like a great price. I haven't seen one under $10K before.

We just got a 2007 HCH-II with Nav this spring for $11,500. Carfax showed nothing but routine maintenance visits, and my daughter immediately started getting better mileage than me in my 2009 HCH-II! (Grumble!)

I think we also got a great deal on this one.

Unfortunately, my daughter just wrecked it! The insurance totalled it out, but we are having it rebuilt, and so far they are going to charge WAY less than the insurance settlement, like nearly HALF! I don't quite understand that one. The only thing we told them specifically not to fix was the headliner. Maybe having to look at a duct-taped headliner every day will remind her to be more careful!

Jon

Hi Jon:

I did not even know you had another. And $11,500 for an 07 w/ NAV last spring? That sounds like an excellent deal! How many miles were on it when you picked it up?

Wayne

I advise using your foot over the cruise control, if you want to get better mileage.
GL

SO SO true!

I *love* the GPS and voice commands

Can you control the GPS with voice commands? We just watched a PVR'd CBC Marketplace episode, where they did tests on GPS usage, thankfully on a road closed to the public.

I suppose anytime you're going an unfamiliar route your odds of an accident are increased, due to increased demands on your attention. But the GPS can exacerbate this.

Most have a disclaimer screen suggesting you interface with the unit while pulled over, but in practice many drivers do it while driving. The degree of distraction seems comparable to text messaging on a cell phone.

Can you control the GPS with voice commands? We just watched a PVR'd CBC Marketplace episode, where they did tests on GPS usage, thankfully on a road closed to the public.

I suppose anytime you're going an unfamiliar route your odds of an accident are increased, due to increased demands on your attention. But the GPS can exacerbate this.

Most have a disclaimer screen suggesting you interface with the unit while pulled over, but in practice many drivers do it while driving. The degree of distraction seems comparable to text messaging on a cell phone.

You can control the GPS with voice commands, but it's not as easy as you'd think. For example, you could say "Find Italian Restaurant" and it will show a list, if the one you want isn't one of the first four choices, you can say "next" until it shows up, then you can say "2" to pick the 2nd choice, and it will pull up the information and you can press the route button (or probably say "route", I haven't tried that).

You can't just say "Find Burger King" which would have been epic. :(

You can even spell out your destination, but it's so time consuming that it doesn't seem worth it. You can say the letters in military style (Alpha, Tango, Sierra, etc) but then it kept asking for confirmation of the letter. So I'd say "Sierra" and instead of putting an S on the screen, it gave me 4 options and I'd have to say "1" for option 1 which was S. So to spell out a street required not only saying the letter, but then confirming it from a list of choices. It was much easier to just ignore the road and type what I wanted quickly. :)

But you can do things like "temperature 72 degrees", "radio 100.3fm", "air conditioning on", and other nifty things like that.

Hi Dlister70:

I started to read the NAVI manual back in 05 when I picked up the Accord and after about50-pages, I just gave up :)

In any case, I hope you are doing well with the HCH-II as I still love the darn thing! Of course I love a lot of 60 to 200 + mpg capable cars ;)

Good Luck

Wayne