Miles per gallon, 2009 Corolla LE

[yuppicide]

I have a 2009 Corolla LE that I bought in February of 2008. This is my first new car ever. At the time the dashboard was reporting I was getting about 28.9 MPG. I was told that new cars need time to break in a little and that I should get better gas mileage usually. After awhile it started to go up. It went all the way up to 29.9 or 29.8 (I forget exactly).

Recently the MPG number started to drop a bit, little by little it went down by .1 or .2 here and there. I have 4700 miles on the car and went in for my first oil change and tire rotation last Saturday.

As of current I am down to 29.4 MPG.

I understand this is not much of a difference and maybe I am being over cautious, but being that this is my first new car ever I just want to make sure I pay attention and go to my dealer if anything happens.

[XR2003]

Welcome to TOC!

Relax, that .4 or .5 difference is very negligible.

Many factors can cause tiny differences in gas mileage.

Wind resistance, different gas from a different gas station, tire inflation, using the A/C on one hot day, using synthetic oil helps with mileage, etc.

The brand new 2009 Corollas have that 1.8L with the XRS model having that 2.4L, so you still are getting better fuel mileage than a lot of people.

But if it concerns that much, you are still under warranty to have the dealer check things out.

[yuppicide]

Thanks for the reply. It didn't concern me that much, which is why I wanted to ask here first. All my previous cars were given to me and were from the 90's.

My last car was a 1995 Chevy Lumina 4Dr. My Mom had it since it was brand new. Man was that a nightmare. The engine in that year and some other years have a gasket problem. The top end blew up on me and I had it fixed. After being fixed it had the same problem almost immediately. They replaced the engine with a junk yard engine and that lasted me a few years longer, but finally had the same problem again.

That is a known problem with the engine. They made reinforced gaskets later on to combat the problem, but that's way too late. I had 130,000+ miles on the car itself and who knows how many on the engine since it came from a junk yard.