Well, after 2.5 months and nearly 8,000 km, here are my fuel economy numbers:

Date | L/100km | mpg (US) | mpg (UK)
------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
10/17/04 | 10.98 | 21.42 | 25.72
10/24/04 | 09.06 | 25.95 | 31.16
10/27/04 | 10.42 | 22.57 | 27.10
10/27/04 | 10.45 | 22.50 | 27.02
10/31/04 | 08.94 | 26.31 | 31.59
11/07/04 | 10.29 | 22.87 | 27.46
11/14/04 | 10.77 | 21.85 | 26.24
11/16/04 | 09.41 | 24.99 | 30.02
11/21/04 | 09.17 | 25.65 | 30.80
11/22/04 | 09.06 | 25.97 | 31.19
12/06/04 | 09.82 | 23.96 | 28.78
12/09/04 | 09.72 | 24.19 | 29.05
12/11/04 | 10.46 | 22.48 | 27.00
12/13/04 | 10.27 | 22.91 | 27.52
12/16/04 | 10.21 | 23.03 | 27.66
12/20/04 | 10.78 | 21.82 | 26.21
12/23/04 | 10.49 | 22.43 | 26.93
12/31/04 | 10.16 | 23.14 | 27.80
------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
Average | 10.03 | 23.56 | 28.29


Now, I do about 70% highway driving, and another 30% of city driving. This includes reving the engine to it\\\'s redline from time to time, and regular shifting around 3,500 RPM. Canadian EPA state the following numbers (www.mazda.ca):

City: 9.2L/100km
Highway: 6.7L/100km

And the USA equivalent (www.mazdausa.com):

City: 25 MPG
Highway: 32 MPG

So for both cases, I am not even close to the CITY rating for the Canadian and USA ratings. I personally don\'t think that I will get anything better than 9L/100km or 25 MPG even if it\'s pure highway driving (as it is in some of the examples above). Perhaps I should really test this out and drive approximately 100 km/h (in the right lane, of course) and see if I can get within 25% of these numbers that EPA is claiming. BTW, I\'m WAY past my so-called break-in period. Should I bring this up to the Mazda dealer? Or simply live with the bad fuel economy?

Cheers,

PiCASSO