Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

I’ve always considered the MCS as “Having your cake and eating it too.”–It can be powerful and sporty, but if you want you can also get great gas milage due to the small car and small engine. For the past two weeks, and especially in the last few days, I have been taking advantage of that, trying as hard as possible to conserve gas, almost as a game.

As you know I log all my gas usage, averaging just under 24mpg. Most of my driving is my commute where I usually get only about 22mpg. I haven’t driven anywhere else in the past week or so, and I’ve been trying to see how much I can stretch my gas on that same commute, half as an experiment, and half to delay my fillup until after Labor Day when prices will hopefully settle down slightly.

I’m now 3/4 of the way through the tank, and have been achieving a constant 29.4-29.7 on the OBC (subtract 2-3 for real); so that is an improvement of about 5mpg. (Keep in mind I have a JCW 210 MCS…others should see much higher milage)

Here is what I have been doing, you may want to keep the same advice in mind during these times:

-Accelerate slowly. Pretend you are a Toyota. In fact, purposely get behind one if you can. Make use of those six close ratio gears to stay under 2k rpm until you’re in 6th.
-Feather the gas pedal lightly. Try to do the same with the brakes if possible as well. Downshift a few times before coming to a stop.
-I’ve been driving 10-15mph slower than my peak highway speeds during my usual commute. Take a break from passing everyone for a while.
-Try to resist the temptation to show up most V8s on the road 🙂

As I have always done I watch and log prices at bostongasprices.com. Their server (which runs all of the gasbuddy.com affiliates) has been taking a hit lately as suddenly many more have discovered it and are joining in. The benefit is that there are price listings for many more stations and they are updated more often. I use them every time I get gas, to know before I head out who is cheapest. I log and analyze my gas usage in their fuel logbook. I’ve also started logging them in myautolog.com, as recently mentioned by Ian, which lets you compare yours to other MINIs and other car models.

And remember, there is no gas shortage. There’s no reason to wait in line or stock up. And keep a smile on your face so all those angry SUV drivers can clearly see how little gas you’re using.