I'm not really surprised - a Sportage is a big heavy car for a 1.6 petrol engine to pull along. You need quite a lot of welly to keep going at a decent speed.

My Octavia vRS (petrol) has a 2.0 litre engine and will do 38 mpg at motorway speeds: if I had the patience to drive at 50 mph I'm sure it would give well over 40 mpg.

Edited by Avant on 15/02/2013 at 23:52

For and ECO 1.6 for me it has been a folly to have bought this model and have already started to look for a replacement.

Thanks for all your comments, I never dreamed the figures in the spec would be 20% inaccurate.

If you sell the car and replace with a similar but theoretically more economical car you will still be disapointed since no car made will match the officila figures. If you get a car that does 40 mpg instead of the 33 mpg you are getting and it costs you £6000 to change doing 10,000 miles a year it will take 19 years before you recoup the £6000 you spend. If you spend less and get a bigger mpg difference it will take less time e.g. £3000 to change and 45 mpg will only take 6 years.

Put simply swapping your car to save money will not work, its crazy to even consider it.

As other have said its a big heavy crossover type vehicle with a 1.6 petrol fitted that has to work hard, that combination will never get good mpg in the real world. In truth 33mpg is pretty good, I would be satisfied, the wife only got that in Puma with less power and less weight driving like a grandma.

20% is a good figure to use as a guide but it still depends on your type of use, more in town and it can be as much as 40%, most out of town and it can be a sclose as 10%. Our Ceed SW CRDi does 51 mpg against a combined of 60.1 mpg, thats 15% off.