Every once in a while, you will run into someone who does not know much about cars. Sometimes, you will run into someone who has fixed his car with a coin and a piece of duct tape. I fall under the first category (but my car really is currently fixed with a coin and a piece of duct tape – it works fine).

As silly as it may sound, there is often the high chance that many people simply don’t know the proper MPG rating of their car. As a matter of fact… I once was one of them. Fortunately for you, I’ve found a handy website that will let you find your average MPG rating regardless of your car make and model.

It Was The GOVERNMENT!

Conspiracies! Lies! Spies! Actually, no.

FuelEconomy is a great website for finding out everything about the current gas situation overall, and that’s the site we’ll be using to find your average MPG. However, despite the website’s features, such as assistance for tracking your fuel use, it’s a little hard to find the page with this information. So I’m just going to link you to it – here.

Using The Options

Although from here on out things will seem pretty straightforward. When you arrive on the page that I provided, you’ll be given 63 makes to choose from. For some reason, I highly doubt that you won’t be able to find your car on here. Oddly enough, there are even a few makes on here that I have never heard of (also, for the traveling Mr Bond, the Aston Martin is an option).

Naturally, moving on from the make, you’ll have to select the model. Based on what I have seen, the website divides everything up into cars, minivans (and friends), and trucks. Granted, seeing that I drive a 1998 Dodge Avenger, it wasn’t too hard to find my own car.

From here, you’ll discover that the website will have tracked back fairly far to find the proper year of your make and model. However, I noticed that it won’t go all the way back to the first model. I decided to check out the Ford Mustang, and the year only went back to 1985 (not my favorite version of the car).

Disclaimers & Other Items

On this portion of FuelEconomy, you’ll see the term “shared MPG” thrown around. Essentially, this just means that the website has used data from several drivers of the same car to create their number. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it should give you an idea of what you’re working with.

Furthermore, the MPG ratings data breaks things down into the average, city, highway, and combination MPGs for your car. Furthermore, the site shows the driving data for each user that submitted information. Sometimes, you’ll get quite a few users, but in other situations, you won’t. Consider the 1985 Mustang that I found. I saw that only one user submitted information, but in the case of the 2008 Dodge Avenger, ten people submitted information.

Conclusion

So in case you ever wanted to know…now you know. I’m someone that likes to find odd bits of practical knowledge out on the web, and sites like FuelEconomy are sources for exactly that.

What other websites do you use to find your average MPG? Have you ever used FuelEconomy for other purposes?

Image Credit: Geert