Hi

I bought my first ever Bug two weeks ago which I love but I'm thinking something can't be right with the petrol consumption.

Its a Beetle Cabrio 2003 auto 2 litre. Its got 51k on the clock. Brand new tyres, serviced, cam belt just done.

At present I'm putting in 23 litres which costs me just over £32. The type of driving I do is very short bursts ie. school runs 2 mile round trips. Every day 4 times a day. Together with other very local journeys. I probably don't ever do more than 4-5 miles per trip. I appreciate the car takes a while to warm up.

The most I've got is 75 miles before the fuel light comes on.

I've worked that out thats an average of 14.8mpg which surely can't be right. This is more juicy than my BMW X5 auto.

I know I'm doing the worst sort of journeys ie. very short ones but surely I should get more than 75 miles???

Anyone got any suggestions.

I'm hoping on one hand I havent bought a dodgy car and on the other I hope this isn't normal as its gonna cost me loads to run it.

Look forward in receiving some advice.

Many thanks

 

Welcome to the forum.

I would say thats a petrol Beetle. 14.8mpg does sound excessively low but the short jouneys that killing the fuel con stone dead and its not getting upto temperature. If you wanted more economy then you should have found a TDI Beetle.

Remove the spark plugs after you've had one of these short journeys and check the colour if its dark and black then you burning to much fuel. You really could do with finding someone with VAG-COM\VCDS to do a fully scan just incase there are error codes that aren't bad enough to put the MIL light on.