M3 > Prius

By mike

With gas at the $4/gallon mark and oil flirting with $140/barrel, fuel economy seems to be on everyone’s mind – and pretty much completely taking over the motivations of any auto manufacturer’s marketing department. You see MPG ratings prominently displayed in TV and magazine ads, where even a Dodge 2500 is trying to claim 20mpg to keep those heavy suckers moving on the lots. Well-intentioned, yet kind of stupid politicians are now stepping into the fray with lifestyle legislation (only a matter of time, eh Boulder?). So it is with great amusement that this comes in from our friends at Top Gear:

A test aired Sunday on BBC’s Top Gear television program, however, casts doubt upon the notion that a hybrid would be the most fuel efficient in every circumstance.

“This is a BMW M3,” the show’s host Jeremy Clarkson said in introducing the car that would compete with a Prius. “It is not designed to be as economical as possible; it is designed to be fast.”

Clarkson chose the most extreme examples to make the point — a sedan equipped with a V-8 engine producing 414 horsepower against the Toyota Prius with its 76 horsepower hybrid motor. The EPA rates the BMW at 14 miles per gallon in the city, and 20 on the highway which compares unfavorably to the 48 and 45 figures for the Prius. In this test, the M3 matched the speed of the Prius as the hybrid ran flat-out over ten laps of the 1.8 mile Top Gear Test Track in Surrey, England. Measurements taken after the run show that the Prius returned just 14.3 miles to the US gallon, while the BMW had 12 percent better fuel economy at 16.1 miles per gallon.

Not to get all little-pinky-turned-up-in-the-air and all, but I’d also like to point out that I’ve been watching my fuel consumption on the Wee as well. I’m consistently in the 55mpg range, and that’s at full-throttle, idling, city and highway, and so on… Anna and I took off for Estes Park last weekend, and at a mid-day fill-up I was showing 59mpg.

via Anna, who’s loving her 35+ mpg Goob hauler. Suck it, hybrids.