[john.wigley]

You are both doing very well. I have never even approached 40 MPG in my V70. The OBC currently shows 30.3, and my spreadsheet figure over 10K+ miles is only 29.5. I didn't think that was too bad for a 2.4 litre, but it pales into insignificance when compared with your figures. I'm not a particularly hard driver, but don't do that many long runs these days. The car appears to run well and I don't appear to be leaking fuel, but clearly it is returning significantly less than comparable cars seem to manage.

I do relatively few miles these days (3 - 4K pa in the V70), so the cost of fuel is not the major factor in my motoring expenses, but it would still be a useful saving if I could reduce my consumption by maybe 10 - 20% to bring it into the mid 30s at least. On the plus side, the near zero depreciation more than compensates for spending a little more at the pumps.

As an aside, I've also owned 7 series cars which have returned significantly differing MPG figures over extended periods of comparable give and take driving. One car (carb) never did much more than 23, while another (FI) achieved 28 over 60k+ miles. Perhaps it depends on the individual car as much as the driver?

Regards, John.