Just after Christmas, I read Seams Unlikely, an autobiography by Nancy Zieman. While Zieman likely falls outside the radar for many of us, she may be well known to your wife, mother, or daughter (which is how I learned about her). As the host of Sewing With Nancy, she has been on television since 1982 and her show is broadcast on most PBS stations in the United States. She is also the founder of Nancy’s Notions based in Bear Creek, Wisconsin.
As an aside, her story is quite compelling. How Zieman overcame several formidable challenges, such as her facial paralysis, to build a multi-million dollar business is the true meat of the story and well worth reading. She is a highly practical, business-savvy person and possesses a very charming girl-next-door personality.
From her book, I suspect Zieman to be somewhat of an automotive fan. In addition to mentioning a Buick and Rambler being in the family during her childhood (she was born in 1953 or 1954), she speaks repeatedly of her first car.
What was it?
Nothing other than a 1971 Ford LTD.
While it seems the car was quite reliable, Zieman said it had a 10 mpg appetite for fuel–quite painful for a young professional in the mid-1970s. Hey, isn’t there always a cost associated with unparalleled style and comfort? She never referred to any of her other vehicles with any specific information, just “the wagon” or “the SUV.” Yes, my friends, the ’71 Ford LTD once again flexes its muscular dynamo of raw animal magnetism, continuing to prove it is no mere mortal of a car.
It sounds like an LTD was Nancy’s most inefficient car. What was yours?
I guess it’s pretty much a tie between my first car, a 66 Impala convertible 283, and my second car, a 75 Monarch 302. The Impala got around 10 or 11 around town, and 17 or so in highway driving. The Monarch about hit its EPA numbers of 12/16. The 16 was highway driving at about 65 mph. Once a friend squeaked out 18 driving at 55 exactly on a flat straight stretch of I-90 in Minnesota and South Dakota.
Anything else I’ve driven was capable of around 17-19 commuting and 25-27 in freeway driving at 65-70.
I see inefficient vs worst MPG as 2 different things altogether. My worst MPG was my ’78 CJ-7. It had a swapped in AMC 360 in place of the factory 304 and that thing was addicted to gas like Charlie Sheen is addicted to fill in the blank! I figure I saw maybe 8-10 mpg at best. Going downhill. With a tailwind. In neutral. Hell, I swear that thing drank 1/8 tank overnite after I parked it! But with 4:11 gears, 31″ tires and even with the 3 spd manual that thing was a MADMAN. Breathing thru 8″ Cherry bombs it sounded like the gates of hell were opening if I punched it, and it had so much torque that if I was headed east when I nailed the throttle, it would add minutes back to the daylight. Granted it drank petrol like a warship but that’s what it costs to make a shit ton of power.
Contrast that with the ’87 Ranger I briefly drove a few years later. The 2.9 V6’s flaccid 140 hp was piss poor even on a regular cab 2wd with 5 spd mtx and tires the size of cheerios. I never managed more than 22 mpgs out of it and I hated that POS with a passion. For what I gave up, that little gain in economics based on 1994 gas prices was a total screw job from where I sit. Giving up so much to gain so little is NOT what efficiency is all about.
So the Renegade had the worst appetite for fuel. But the least efficient was definitely the ranger.
Your Ranger numbers are interesting I had a 90 2.9 5sp 4×4 and it got 21 around town if I kept the aluminum canopy on it and 25 on the freeway with the stock size 235/75 tires. With the canopy off it would drop 1 or 2 MPG.
I drove that thing with my foot on the floor everywhere I went. Partially since you HAD to in order to get it to move, partially out of sheer spite and hatred for that little turd of a truck. Even when I showed it mercy, I think 23 hwy was as good as it got.
Ive found out that in those days, that was about as good as ANY minitruck would do. Even a strip-O 4 banger Toyota was lucky do the same. My brother in law had a ’87 4 cyl 4×4 Toyota that would MAYBE see 20 mpg. By comparison, my ’85 Scrambler with more weight and a lot more guts thanks to the 258 6cyl could see 17 hwy.
I didn’t keep track of mileage before 1980.
I figure the most likely greatest friend of big oil was the 67 Thunderbird with a tired 390.
Next worst was probably the 70 Cougar with a Windsor 351/2bbl. By then I was pumping my own gas and because I was lazy didn’t want to buy odd amounts of gas and wind up with a pocket full of change, so would put in $5 worth whenever it got down to a quarter tank
I could probably find the brochure for my POS 78 Merc Zephyr with a 302, but it ran so miserably it probably never got anywhere the near the EPA estimate that is in the brochure.
I started keeping track with the 80 Renault R5 aka LeCar. iirc, the 50hp pushrod with the manual choke managed 28mpg
The 85 GLC would tease about 35mpg on the highway. If I wasn’t lazy, I could dig out the brochure to see what the EPA figured for that one.
The 98 Civic in suburban and freeway driving routinely topped 40 in it’s younger years. My 97 Civic beater didn’t have a power steering pump leaching power and topped 41. In later years, the 98 fell off, to only a bit over 39. iirc, the EPA highway rating was 36.
The Escort was in the mid 30s somewhere.
Biggest gas hog of the “modern” age, was the Ford Taurus X: 25 highway/17 city
Set a new record for the still quite new and not broken in Jetta on Sunday as I took a quick squirt down the highway to try out the new GPS navi
2 DD with similar fuel economy.
1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme 307 V8 quadrajet, four speed auto, positrac. 22 mpg on the highway at roughly 65 mph.
2004 Ford F150 Heritage 4.6 V8, 4 speed auto, 22 mpg on the highway at 75 mph.
My 1967 Mustang 289 2brl three speed auto, geared much higher than stock can get 20 mpg in mixed driving. (But never a daily driver).
Most efficent? 1982 Chevy Celebrity Iron Duke 3-speed auto, 29 mpg 50/50 highway city mix.
It’s hard to say, since I’ve owned a multitude of ’70s gas guzzlers, but I’d say my 1973 periwinkle blue AMC Javelin AMX was the thirstiest. 401 with 4 barrel. 7 to 8 mpg.
My current driver…a 1969 Buick LeSabre. Its 350 gets around 14 MPG. Although with the 26 gallon tank it has decent range.
Boris, that is one fine 69 Buick you got….I always liked those 69-70 full-sizers, and make mine like yours…a four door sedan or hardtop sedan, Wildcat preferably, but a LeS is darn good too! Looks like a PA inspection sticker on it…I have one still on my 69 Monterey!
What a sweet original Buick. Nice choice of minivans in the background, BTW. (My wife drives a ’96 & I’m trying to revive a ’97).
Nice car. My last “old” daily driver was a 68 Newport that I drove back in the mid 90s. It was not quite as good on mileage as yours, but it also needed a little carb work. I miss the calming influence of a big, old 1960s American sled around you every day.
My ’65 Galaxie 500 gets driven to work whenever the weather is decent–in fact, I am driving it today. It will get 10-12mpg on the suburban commute to work. Car has a 390 that I built myself, performance C6 transmission with higher stall torque converter but still has 3.00 rear gears, which gives it some highway legs. It will get 14 mpg at 75 mph. It gets well down into single digit mpg if you have fun with the 390 and 750 Holley.
I see some very low mpg being reported and mine isn’t a true every-day-driver either. Maybe I can win the least efficient car used for commuting TODAY! Here is a shot from my office parking lot this morning as proof…
Nice!
In theory my 1982 Renault 5 with its 845 cc engine was the most efficient. However, since I kicked the hell out of it everytime I drove it, relatively speaking (given size and weight) it was the most inefficient car I ever had.
I did feed the few horses under the hood with good ol’ leaded super gasoline though, so they always had the best oats that money could buy.
Current daily driver is a 2002 Land Cruiser 90 3.0 D4D, that’s a 3.0 liter common rail injection diesel engine with turbo intercooling. About 26 mpg on average.
I had a 15 MPG rule,if it did less I wouldn’t buy it.
No contest: 1963 Cadillac Fleetwood with a very tired carb. City driving was 7.5 mpg on leaded premium (which was still an option in 1979). I managed to eke 13 mpg out of it on the highway once, though.
Another kind of inefficiency was the 1.5 block commute I had in my first career job. I needed the car frequently enough durung the day that it made sense (to me, at least). VW replaced my muffler under the 2 year warranty on my 85 GTI.
This is easy: My 1976 Chevy C-20 ¾ pickup. 13.5 mpg no matter how I drove the thing.
Ordered from the factory, I kept it for two years to the day! Sold it for almost as much as I paid for it, too.
2007 Ford Ranger 4×4. 4.0L 5-spd extended cab. My 2011 F-150 gets far better mileage. I still miss that Ranger, though.
I used my ’66 Chrysler 2-door hardtop as a daily driver in the warmer months, so that would be it for me. However, I recall one summer when the price of diesel went way up relative to gas for some reason. If my Chrysler could live on regular 87 octane instead of mid-grade or premium gas, I think it would’ve been cheaper per mile than my pickup truck that year.
A choice of two; in college I had a 1963 Plymouth with a 361 V8 (it had the biggest two barrel carburetor I’ve ever seen) and a Torqueflight. I went through rear tires at a quick rate on this car as it was easy to break things loose. Back then gas was around 25 cents/gallon so no one was really concerned with it; the Plymouth got around 12-13 MPG in town, and maybe a little better on the highway.
Some years later when I was in the Air Force I had a ’73 Nova with a 350 (LM1), a four speed and a 3.73 Posi rear end. This set up got around 11 MPG in town and 15 on the highway, the one plus was that the Nova had radial tires which seemed to last longer than the bias plies on the Plymouth. Eventually I was able to acquire a ZQ3 350 from a wrecked Corvette and a friend and I swapped it into the Nova. The car went from having (roughly) 165 HP to (an advertised 300). The car was noticeably quicker and the fuel mileage might have actually improved; probably because it didn’t require as much throttle to accelerate at the same rate.
That’s easy! My most inefficient daily driver was my former Russian girlfriend!
Well, my 1965 Chevy C-10, my 1970 Chevy CST 10, 1983 Dodge W-150, 1988 Chevy K1500 and my 1968 GTX were/are all under 10 mpg average. Other than a brief ownership of a 1986 Park Avenue, and my current Ecoboost F-150, I’ve never had a daily driver that gets over 20 mpg. OPEC loves me.
Most inefficient are the current vehicles: 2008 Tacoma V-6, someplace around 19 mpg; 2003 Saab 9-5 Linear wagon, 19.8 mpg if the SID is to be believed.
Best mileage: 1965 Volvo 1800S, which ran consistently around 29 mpg, but as high as 39 mpg (@90 mph) on one long trip.
Guess I have become anachronistic. Can’t seem to feel that something big that gets in the twenties is inefficient. I have always treated 20 mpg as the benchmark.
Would probably be my 1971 Pontiac GrandVilles. That’s right, two of them, owned concurrently for a little while.
This was late 1980 to around 1983.
Both 4 door hardtops. 455 CID & THM400. Could pass most anything except a gas station!
My long gone ’77 Silverado. The old girl had a very tired 305 that couldn’t crack 12mpg downhill with a tailwind. While being pushed by a runaway semi.
500 ci ’76 Coupe DeVille with 10-11 mpg hwy, although my ’58 Buick isn’t much better, despite having a displacement 136 ci less.
I guess mine would be my first car the 1968 Mercury Cougar that got 12-13 mpg on premium. Yet, since gas was 0.29 cents per gallon and paid for by my job it wasn’t an issue. Still have it but mods have it at 16-18 mpg now. After that all cars have been sixes and then four bangers. Out of that group the Audi 100LS would have been the most inefficient due to repair issues. Today, my most inefficient out of eight cars, is the 67 Mercury Park Lane with a 410. Only 12 mpg but I surely enjoy driving that big smooth riding responsive car. Nothing like a big Ford FE engine for torque and power in a big car with a C6 behind. Too bad those days are over. Oh, there is the 65 F100 with just as bad mpg but a totally different driving experience.
I would not consider these cars inefficient daily drivers. Maybe fuel inefficient daily drivers, but not necessarily inefficient.
Went to the shop the other day, sometimes just hang out and talk to the mechanics. They said they have a new Audi on the lift. Timing belt and brakes, around $3000.
That old truck that gets 10 mpg looks very good when the repairs are cheap. I sometimes wonder, what you gain in fuel efficiency, you lose in price and / or repairs.
Using and Audi for a metric of cheap repairs his hardly valid. A timing belt and brakes for a Civic would be a lot less. That is when they had timing belts, which they now do not….
I’d say my 2000 Ford Contour with the 2.0 4 cylinder and automatic.
On my typical commute to work, my 1995 Explorer with the pushrod 4.0, 3.73 axle ratio and 4 speed automatic got 18mpg, the Contour with its fuel sipper engine and lithe weight compared to the overweight Explorer got… 18mpg. On shortish trips of less than 300 miles, the Explorer was actually cheaper to drive, as it matched the mileage of the Contour on those trips at 22mpg, course after the 3rd fillup of constant highway miles, the little Contour soundly beat the snot out of the Explorer getting 40mpg due to a quirk in the way the computer handled the engine managment. I tracked mileage using the miles/gallons and no trip computer, and for most of the driving I did, the Explorer was cheaper.
Hmmm. My 1962 Plymouth Valiant station wagon got me through college, and delivered about 17 mpg. That’s right: 17 mpg. It had the 170 slant-six and Torqueflite, and had the pickup of, well, an underpowered Valiant.
Next up was a 1970 Torino Brougham, which gave about 14 mpg in the city and 19-20 on the highway. But at least it was roomy and comfortable and it had both get-up-and-go and factory A/C.
My partner had for a while a 1971 Chevy Impala hardtop. That probably gave about 12 mpg in town. The next cars were a 1977 Honda Accord (about 27 mpg) and a 1984 Mazda 626 (mid to high 20s). We craved a bit more room then, so we got a 1993 Mercury Sable, with (unfortunately) the 3.8L engine. Gobs of torque from that thing, but after nine years, the dreaded head gasket failure happened. The Sable gave us 18-19 mpg in the city and 27-28 on the highway.
In 2003 we got a new Honda Civic Hybrid that gave us anywhere from 35 to 45 mpg, depending on speed and other conditions. In 2012 we traded it for a Camry Hybrid, which has given us 33-40 mpg.
So: one unexpected gas hog, one normal hog, two moderate hogs, and several unthirsty cars.
Current ’97 Blazer 4-door 4×4 can do 20 in good weather. When it’s cold…17.
I think I got 10 MPG out of the ’66 Chrysler 300 with a 440 that I owned when I was 16.
This was 1973…at that time, my dad had a ’70 Chevy C-10 2wd with a 350/4-bbl and 3 on the tree. 15-16 is what I remember with that truck and I drove it hard.
Mom’s ’68 Mustang convertible did no better as I recall…it was a 6-automatic…probably had the 170. Didn’t have enough power to get out of its own way.
I also once owned a ’68 Chrysler Newport convertible with a 440. 10 was about all it would do…
I have never liked buying a lot of gasoline, so my car purchases were always based on that. The worst I ever had was a 1973 Scout II. It drank gas like no tomorrow. Whenever I took it into the bush, I had to have at least one 20 litre can with me. It was a total beater and great off road, since I didn’t care if I hurt it.
Since then, my worst daily driver in terms of fuel consumption is my present Acura TL. It does 12 L/100 km in the city (19.6 MPG US) and 7.2 (33 mpg) on the highway, on premium gas, sans deathanol. For me, I see this as thirsty, but compared to a pick-up truck, I guess it’s pretty cheap to run.
The interesting thing about the TL is it gets almost exactly the EPA rating on both the city and the highway, they being 12.2 and 7.2.
1973 Dodge Monaco Station Wagon
I needed wheels cheap and fast, in 1979 this car was being dumped for $700 as we were in the midst of Fuel Crisis II. It had 50K on it, every option with a 440 4bbl. What a pig, 10 MPG downhill with a tailwind, coupled with hit or miss availability of fuel made for excitement when the tank was low (which was most of the time).
It got me by for a year, put 15k on it and sold it for 1200
it looked like this but was gold instead of yellow
Egad, this wagon is the same color as my college roommate’s 72 Polara wagon (no wood, open headlights) that he bought around 1980. His had a 360 and also got pretty bad gas mileage. Maybe 12? This car, this color and that awful light brown interior did not make for a very good looker.
that Dodge is a whole lot of sexy
Holy crap! I bought that car’s exact twin as a junior in high school! Paid a whopping $80.00 for it, seeing as it was during the second gas crisis. Only difference was that my DiNoc was a bit faded and peeling in spots 😀 . Mine couldn’t break 9mpg no matter how gently I drove it, which explains why I only owned it for maybe 6 months.
Don’t recall the mileage it got, but my 1969 Dodge Charger R/T would probably be my most fuel inefficient ride. This was during my college years of 74-75. VW Beetles were quite popular at the time but were not for me. Little 4-cylinder Nissans, Hondas and Toyotas were starting to catch on. Had I gotten a small car back then, it would have been a Dodge (Mitsubishi) Colt coupe.
Two others cars I owned (briefly) were probably my most inefficient, though were never daily drivers. A 1961 Chrysler 300-G coupe sporting the 413 with dual fours. And a 1962 Chrysler 300-H with the same powerplant. Those were both awesome cars but in need of restoration in order to be show cars Those both likely would have been sub 10mpg around town or when driven with gusto! In their day, they were at about the high point of grand American luxury, power and style.
All our full-size pickups, Dodge and Ford vans got bad gas mileage, but they were not “inefficient” in the same way as a big block Camaro or the like. At least they could, and did, carry substantial payload. I dont remember which one was worst, but from the ’66 A-100 to the ’05 Tundra, they all got 10-13mpg in the city.
Toss up between my ’69 Olds 442 (400 Holley 4bbl 4-speed) and ’74 Ford Country Squire (400 4bbl Auto). The Olds was certainly more fun to drive
80 olds delta 88 350 8 to 12 mpg
78 ltd ford 400 18 to 27 (most efficient car)
79 Lincoln cont. 400 8 to 11
79 Buick lesabre 301 10 to 12
75 Granada 250 10 to 13
76 Buick lesabre 455. 7
72 Buick Electra 455 8 to 12
78 ford ltd 460 10 to 18
93 t bird 302 15
88 Lincoln town car 302 15
83 Lincoln mark vi 302 14
87 ford 150 300 17
It would seem that for some reason I drive big imperialistic gas guzzlers and that at least in the 70 s and 80s ford products got better gas mileage. All the gm cars fell apart while the fords didn’t. Gas mileage isn’t everything. Most of these cars were dirt cheap to buy. I drove a 600 $ ltd for 14 years and a 500$ town car for 9 with no major repairs.
According to https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/1976_feg.pdf and https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/1977_feg.pdf
My 455 1973 Pontiac GrandVille at 15mpg (bs) is beat by my 440 1976 Dodge Royal Monaco at 11mpg