saleen322

I am posting this in hopes it may help give a potential Fusion buyer a real-world example of what MPG to expect from a manual transmission 1.6 EcoBoost Fusion. The first question I always have after I read the MPG someone posts is under what conditions and highway or city, while helpful, is just not the most descriptive. I took a retirement job that is 37 miles from my home. About 35% of the trip is in areas that are stop and go with traffic lights that I call city and the rest is mostly 2-lane highway with maybe 4 stop signs. It also goes from a low of about 900 ft above sea level to around 2500 ft in about 10 miles and then is up and down over the remaining 27 miles. While that is helpful I thought some kind of yard stick is still needed. Okay I will give you two; a 2012 F150 4X4 Supercrew, 3.5 EcoBoost with the max tow package-3.73 rear and a 2009 VW Jetta TDI diesel with a 6-speed manual transmission. The truck will do a best of around 20.5 MPG in flat highway use. The VW I had since new and it has done as high as 48 in trips from PA to Georgia. The Fusion is new, has less than 400 miles on it as I write this post. The VW has 131K on it and has never gotten better fuel mileage than now. The F150 has 14,000 on it. The VW gets an average of 38.5 MPG on this route while the F150 does 16.1 MPG. Even as new as the Fusion is, it has averaged 31.2 MPG over 3 trips with one of them in falling rain. Because in PA diesel fuel costs more than gasoline, the expense is even closer. Diesel just went down to $3.199 and gas at the same station is $2.599. That works out to $0.0831 per mile for the VW and $0.0833 per mile for the Fusion. I can’t help but believe the Fusion will only get better as it breaks in. Hope this helps.

I currently have a VW TDI but I was car looking a couple of days ago and saw a new 2014 Fusion with a 1.6 Ecoboost but the transmission is a 6-speed manual. I did not even know Ford made that. Took a test drive yesterday and it seems to run very well and the transmission shifts as nice as my VW. Any advice about these as far as problems, mileage, etc? Thanks for reading.