WSJ Blogs

Real-time commentary and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
Driver's Seat

Sighted: Ford’s 40 Mile-Per-Gallon Pioneer

Jonathan Welsh
A well-preserved Ford Escort economy car from the 1986-1990 model run.

I have heard a lot of hype recently about the Ford Focus, Chevrolet Cruze and a handful of other new models that can go 40 miles on a gallon of gas. Doing so is a great feat for modern economy cars in the U.S. But it wasn’t always that way. A quarter-century ago, 40 mpg was just so-so.

It was another Ford, the Escort, which was putting up the big numbers back then. A special high-mileage version called the Pony had a highway fuel-economy rating of 42 miles per gallon. The car in the photo, which looks like a late-’80s model, isn’t a Pony, but most Escorts a t least flirted with the 40-mpg mark when they were properly tuned. Knowing this, I find today’s economy cars, to some degree, disappointing.

In the 1980s, instead of crowing about fuel economy Escort drivers might have asked why their cars couldn’t  match the Honda Civic CRX that got about 50 mpg or the Volkswagen Rabbit diesels that were pushing 60 mpg. At the time there were many economy cars vying for best-in-class fuel economy. Sure, they were lighter and less crash-worthy than today’s small cars, and they were slower. But shouldn’t the march of technology have taken car of that while also boosting gas mileage?

A friend recently said he found the tiny Fiat 500 unimpressive because its highway fuel economy is only in the 30s. He said “40 is the new 30″ when it comes to fuel economy. Well, I wouldn’t call it new. Maybe I’ll scan the Want Ads under “Rabbit diesel.”

Add a Comment


Comments (5 of 10)

View all Comments »
    • The issue today is weight. We want safe cars, that also have high end stereos, power seats, sunroofs etc. That adds weight and hurts fuel economy. Also, the fuel eceonomy numbers from back in the day used a different testing format.

    • The 5.0L's ford put out in the mid 80's-Early 90's in their full size E150 vans and F150's trucks use to get 21 mpg on the highway and 16 mpg city, they were built heavier then too they used denser steel and had heavier components inside as well, they also had v belts to drive every component under the hood robbing horsepower. So is it because the government struck a deal out west to buy up corn from the farmers to produce corn for ethanol production? or is it technology has caused more fuel consumption? Oils have been refined to not break down as bad as they use to with conditioners as well as other fluids, we have low resistance tires that prevent drag and we also have aerodynamics now that aren't the big box walls we use to push down the road but yet we still average 6 mpg less then we did 26 years ago so whats the problem here? Why?

    • AutoWeek did a much better article explaining this. They compared a 1990-era Civic (rated at 42 or so) to a current Honda Fit, which rates at 33.

      The difference? Weight. With today's safety standards, and consumer expectations for safety and convenience features, the Fit is more than 20% heavier than that old Civic. As a result, it needs more HP to push it around and, therefore, gets lower mileage.

    • One of the biggest robbers of fuel mileage efficiency is horsepower. Automakers in the '90s and 2000s switched from making fuel efficient and, yes, lighter cars to making Accords and Camrys that could go 0-60 in less than 7 seconds. Example: A Honda Accord in the 1978 put out 68 hp. The smallest engine in the current Honda Accord (a 2.0L engine) puts out 177hp.

    • I owned a 4-cylinder manual transmission Fiero for a while (an 85 model). OK, it was was slow on the uptake, but it pulled down well over 40 mpg on long road trips. Don't know what the car was rated for in terms of fuel consumption, but those were "real world" numbers I saw at the pump.

About Driver's Seat


    Jonathan WelshJonathan Welsh
    Joe WhiteJoe White
    Senior Editor
    Dan NeilDan Neil
    Senior Editor
    • Driver's Seat on Facebook