Well, I had my first fill up today and was curious to see how well the 2011 Subaru Outback did. I had just over 400 miles and a little less than 1/4 of the tank left. My digital gage readout estimated there was 110 miles left. I was under the impression that I was getting pretty good mileage…again looking at the digital gage estimating the current mileage while driving around town.

I drove into Costco and filled up the tank. I was getting concerned when the fuel pump wasn’t shutting off very quickly. Actually nothing to worry about because it wasn’t quite at 10 gallons. I’m not used to 87 octane (the Mazda took only 93 octane and it must have pumped a lot faster) pumping so slow. Perhaps it was because the pressure was a little low…the station was packed! I ended up pumping a little over 13 gallons into the tank. Man! It felt great when I calculated my gas mileage to be a little over 29 mpg.

New cars usually get really bad gas mileage at first. This was the “rule” but the past few new cars I owned never really improved significantly. I’ll be adding synthetic oil when I reach the 4000 mile mark. Eventually I’ll change the differential oil to synthetic too…but that will be down the road…a long ways.