I am far more concerned about what Consumer Reports says about a car than Car & Driver....those are a bunch of cars that are, cool looking, fun to drive and fast (mostly) rated by a bunch of reporters that do not have to live with the car day to day, the repair or upkeep (including gas).
I have found that, most "car guys" don't care for Hybrids, they push them hard and then complain they get lousy mileage.

 

I might not take issue with much of Arbittan's post, but this definition of "fuel sipper" -- aw, come on. Not even the gimme-30-more-horsepowah car mags (I'm a Motor Trend subscriber myself) confuse fuel-efficient and fuel "sipper."

It's debatable whether the Corvette w/cylinder deactivation is fuel efficient. Maybe. Seems like you'd want to compare horsepower-per-liter to actual fuel consumption to decide that. (In which case, not really.) Or, less precisely, miles-per-gallon will do it. (The Vette is high-20s highway, I believe, or did the new EPA numbers drop it to mid-20s highway?) So, maybe you'd say, for a V8, it's fuel efficient. But under either measure, no reasonable argument ever has or ever will count the Chevy small-block as a "fuel-sipper," no matter how many cylinders you deactivate. Running on four cylinders, the Vette still displaces (depending on the version of V8) 2.8 to 3.5 liters. And Chevy doesn't have a lean-burn system. And while the cylinders are deactivated, they're still producing friction and drag that creates an efficiency penalty. So that's one fuel-thirsty four-cylinder -- that, lest we forget, kicks back to 8 for anything other than level cruising.

Not going to dork around arguing about the definition of the almost stupidly subjective term "sipper" -- just pointing out that *nobody* else says that of any V8s out there, with good reason. Definitely the latest GMs are pretty fuel-efficient *for a V8*, but nothing that can't get 30 mpg highway can be called "fuel-sipping" with a straight face. And I assume Arbittan's wasn't when he did it. Thanks for yanking our chains, dude.

cheers --
doug

 

I suppose that the Vette having 4 cyl chugging fuel, while the other 4 dont equals sipping on average....