Car recommendations for good mpg/ stability in winter/rain.?

(2011-10-02 14:30:04)

1. steel Says: I'm deciding between honda civic, honda accord, and toyota prius, camry. saab 9-3 nissan sentra, acura tsx any other recommendations would be helpful.

I owned an older civic that did not have the new features such as vsa(traction control)/ econ.

2. JerryJ Says: The Prius has great stability in winter conditions. Besides traction control it also has vehicle stability control, which is a system that prevents doughnuts if you are going anything like a reasonable speed for conditions. It's really hard to make the Prius spin out. However it's important to replace the OE tires with tires that have better traction such as Nokian WR-g2 severe service all-season or a set of real studless winter tires from a first tier tire manufacturer. The OE tires are not very good under winter conditions (some Prius owners say this more strongly). Equipped with proper tires, my Prius has been better than the 4x4 I used to drive in all but off-road deep snow.

Note that the Nokian WR-g2 are very low rolling resistance as well so MPG is great.

2004 Prius MPG from the logbook. (Complete years only):
2003-2004 -- 50.8 mpg 17,628 miles
2005 -- 52.6 mpg 14,688 miles
2006 -- 56.3 mpg 16174 miles
2007 -- 57.3 mpg 18384 miles
2008 -- 59.9 mpg 21755 miles
2009 -- 61.4 mpg 16177 miles
2010 -- 65.2 mpg 12134 miles

http://www.nokiantires.com/tyre?id=11899&group=1.01&name=Nokian+WRG2

And don't believe the FUD that's sometimes posted saying that the Prius isn't economical doing highway driving. It works great on the highway.

DATE__________ODO____INC_____AVG
--- Trip to NE starts here
08/13/10____111690____625____59.8 (3.9)
08/14/10____112308____618____60.0 (3.9)
08/20/10____112972____663____64.2 (3.7)
08/22/10____113411____438____58.9 (4.0)
08/31/10____113922____510____61.8 (3.8)
--- Trip to NE ends here

3. Ben Linus Says: I recently rented a 2011 Toyota Corolla and while I can't attest to its handling in the winter, I did drive a lot of highway miles and through torrential rain for hours during my trip and I came away pleasantly surprised. It got 39 mpg over the 1,500 miles I drove which was significantly better than its EPA highway mpg rating (for whatever reason). I didn't make a huge effort to get exceptional mileage or anything fwiw.

It wasn't fast and it didn't handle like a sports sedan when driven harder than most people will ever realistically drive one, but it rode well and was very efficient - 2 things nice to have in a long distance cruiser/commuter car. And it's about $7K cheaper than a Prius.