Twenty Thousand Miles

Greetings,

No, I did not make a New Year’s resolution to blog more (though that would have been a good idea if I had thought of it).  Sorry (or you’re welcome depending if you like my blog or not).

I did pass an important milestone though, namely the Fiat passing the 20,000 mile mark on the odometer.  You may recall my blog noting the passing of the 10,000 mile mark (link).  Let’s see if things got any better as my little, red Fiat gets a little more broken in now that 10,000 more miles has passed.

It took me 33 tanks to get to 10,000 miles but only 30 more to get to 20,000.  Logic would suggest that my miles / gallon is better and it is overall…

For the first 10,000 miles, my mileage was 32.02.  This has gone slightly up to 34.09 however, as you can see by the chart, this is partly due to some 38 mpg tanks on the far left side of the chart from a trip that I made to Indiana with my son.  If you omit those, the mileage drops to 33.38.  This is still better compared to the first 10,000 miles but not quite to the 34 mpg on the sticker that was in the window of the Fiat when I bought it.  I am not sure why my mileage has gone down in recent weeks.  Maybe the cold weather has lowered the tire pressure or maybe the dealership used a different oil during the last oil change.

Moving on to what is important…

For the first 10,000 miles, I hovered around a dime per mile to drive but with the slightly better gas mileage and the much better…

…you can see how my cost to drive (price per mile) has gone down significantly.  For my last tank, the cost per mile was less than $0.06!

I still enjoy driving this little car every day to and from work and around town with the wife.  We even piled the kids into the car during a recent dinner at Macaroni Grill (the Kia minivan had a headlight out) so it (almost) functions as a family car.  I am averaging 15k miles per year so far so I will see you in about 8 months for chapter 3 of this blog series.

Jon