[masraum]

Originally posted by Purrybonker
Then that would be a very silly person.

You drive 1500 miles from Calgary to Vegas on open interstate, through open prairie and see what kinda average you make. This is a day & half drive through mainly flat country with pretty much no sign of humanity save Salt Lake and surrounds. An average of 85 is easy to do, even four or five gas stops would let you average 80 over that many miles. The speed limit is 70/75 - even my granny would average 80 with her '63 Valiant push-button automatic.

So, lets say 3000 miles at 80 mph (ha!) - that still leaves room for an average of around 60 mph for the remaining 2000 to average 70ish for a 5000 mile trip. And the rest of those miles are like Vegas-OC-Palm Desert? That's a slam dunk.

I'm with PB on this one. Trying to get an avg of 71mph on a drive that's 1000 miles is much harder than one that's 5000 miles. 5000 mile drives are probably going to contain many more highway miles than city miles which helps the avg. Imagine having 50 miles of city driving in a 100 mile drive, then a 500, then a 1000, then a 5000. Which one is going to be more affected by the city miles?

I drove from my house in Houston to my parents house in the pan handle of FL, 550 miles in the 911. It took me just over 7 hours, and that includes stopping for a burger once, to get gas once, and to take a leak once. I think that probably puts me at about 6.5 hours of driving. That's an avg of about 84 mph. I think I got 22 mpg on that trip.