with all the interest surrounding the early fuel economy performance of our best of 2018-winning volkswagen atlas (which, spoiler alert: so far, not great), it'd be easy to forget that its award-winning predecessor is sitting here at cars hq mere parking spaces away. in the six months since we decided to keep our best of 2017-winning chrysler pacifica on for another year, the minivan has continued to perform reliably well, though its fuel economy is still below epa estimates.
blame it in part on the lack of extravagant road trips. as those go, we've been gentle — i can attest to a wildly uneventful excursion for the detroit auto show in january, and we've used the pacifica's ample storage space as a multimedia support vehicle at a few of our local challenges (the latest of which you can find here). but when it comes to really long hauls — the type at which minivans, in all their bulbous function over form, are designed to excel — big mileage has been more the exception than the rule. more than anything else, the pacifica has served as a weekend schlepmobile or a shuttle from the main office to our offsite studio.
here's where we stand after just surpassing the 20,000-mile mark at the end of may.
2017 chrysler pacifica touring-l plus
long-term mileage
- epa rating city/highway/combined: 18/28/22 mpg
- recommended fuel: regular
- highest single-tank average: 29.4 mpg
- lowest single-tank average: 11.2 mpg
- average mileage: 19.7 mpg
- current mileage: 20,062
- total cost of fuel: $2,545.38
- longest range observed: 426 miles
so, will we continue to treat the pacifica with kid gloves as the year goes on? will summer road-trip season 2018 bring another boost to the average mileage as it did in 2017? will the multimedia team decide on a whim to joyride across the u.s. just for the sake of our two-year fuel-economy update? check back here in december when we have answers to all of these questions and more.
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