We recently noticed some new grinding sounds coming from our 2006 Pontiac Vibe when you used the brakes first thing in the morning. The first thing I thought was “Oh Crap.”. The second thing I thought was “Damn, I haven’t done anything with the brakes yet on this car.”.

That’s right folks, our 2006 Pontiac Vibe was over 85,000km on the factory brake pads and rotors. Now, admittedly, we do a lot of highway driving and very little in the way of stop and go driving. Even so, I figured that over 85,000km was a little much for a car to go on factory pads and rotors. We got the car into our local garage for them to take a look and let us know what the damage was going to be.

“There’s nothing wrong with your brakes.”

Yup, that’s what the mechanic said to The Boss. He mentioned that there were a few “hot spots” on the rotors that he was going to grind down but otherwise the fronts still had about 50% and the rears were still about 60%. Even the mechanic was very surprised when he realized these were the stock factory brake pads and rotors.

I really can’t complain about our 2006 Pontiac Vibe. We have only had to pay for a set of winter tires, oil changes and tire rotations. I think we’re in for a new set of all-seasons next spring but the car will be near 90,000km by then and again, I can’t complain about getting that much mileage out of a set of stock factory tires or a set of pads and rotors!

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We’ve had our 2006 Pontiac Vibe for about two and a half years now and we recently passed 80,000km (just shy of 50,000 miles). Overall the car has been working well for us. We’ve had no mechanical issues with the car and the only real cost has been regular oil changes. I think we’re soon due for a brake job though. We still have the original all-seasons on the car after 80,000km but we’ve put winter tires on for two of the three winters the car has gone through. Even with winters, the all-seasons tires still have around 55,000km.

Our average fuel consumption for 2008 is currently at 8.34L/100km (~ 28 MPG). This isn’t very good in my opinion but it does include winter driving with the snow tires on. In the winter with the snow tires, we’re getting around 9.0L/100km (~ 26.5 MPG). In the summer months we’re down around 7.5L/100km (~ 31.4 MPG) which is a little better. It’s interesting because the US DoE has the 2006 Pontiac Vibe at 31 MPG (7.6L/100km) for highway with their readjusted numbers. My problem still stems from the fact this car was rated at 34 MPG (6.9L/100km) for highway when we bought it. The best fuel economy I’ve ever achieved in that car was a one-off 6.7L/100km (~ 35.1 MPG). That was when we were driving on secondary roads averaging 90km/h (~55 MPH), true “highway” driving. I also annoyed the snot our of The Boss on this drive as I was putting into practice some of the driving techniques I’ve learned from reading ecomodder.com.

With some driving style modifications, I think this car should be able to do consistently in the 6.8L/100km to 7.0L/100km range in the summer. It’s very noticeable though when you turn on the AC as the little 1.8L engine has to rev higher to deal with the added load. This definitely contributes to worse fuel economy. One thing to keep in mind is that the defrost settings on this car also turn on the AC.

One other gripe about the car is that there is a very thin layer of paint. It seems that everything causes a small paint chip. I think if you sneezed while standing within 10 feet of the car it would get a paint chip. To try and keep the rust at bay, I bought one of those colour matched paint pens from the dealership and every couple months I have to dab a few more chips. Nothing major but it’s one maintenance annoyance I could do without.

We’re probably going to keep this car for many more years. It will probably get relegated to the “second car” in a few years as it’s not quite big enough for a growing family.

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Well, it’s almost been a year since we got the 2006 Pontiac Vibe. We still think it’s a decent car for us around town. This past Christmas we discovered that it’s just barely big enough for us to take the whole family on a road trip. More on that later.

After about 32500km, we’re averaging about 8.37L/100km. Since about 80% of that is what we would consider highway driving, we’re not overly thrilled with the real world gas mileage of the Vibe. Now that we have winter tires on and the air is cooler, we’ve been getting just over 9.0L/100km. It hasn’t even gotten really cold here yet as I think the lowest temperature over night was about -15 degrees Celcius.

As for the size of the car. We have a large dog and she basically takes up 3/4 of the trunk area. On top of that, with our munchkin in the infant carrier in the back, the passenger seat is too close to the dash to be comfortable for a long trip. So we had the car well packed for our trip this Christmas. Not too much in the way of weight though, about the same as 3 adults and light luggage. On the way out, we averaged 8.5L/100km. Not too bad. The only comment is that the car is definitely underpowered for passing. With this relatively minor load it had a heck of a time getting up to speed to pass on two-lane roads. It can be done but you had to turn off the overdrive and get a good run (ie get the car into the 4500-5000 rpm range) on the car you wanted to pass.

On the way back we had a rooftop carrier with some extra weight, probably equivalent to 4 adults and light luggage. Holy crap that made a huge difference on the gas mileage though. We averaged about 11.5L/100km! Our worst was a stretch through Quebec where we had a head wind and I was trying to drive too fast (Screaming munchkin, Quebec drivers, middle of nowhere, etc.). That lead to 296km on just over 35L or 12.1L/100km. Yikes! The biggest problem (other than the rooftop carrier) was that the car couldn’t stay in overdrive. It was constantly kicking down into 3rd gear when I had the cruise control on. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to break any land speed records. I was driving at a speed slightly slower than you would normally see on those roads. Heck, the two cops I passed weren’t interested in me at all.

On top of that, I discovered a trait about the car that I don’t especially like. When it does kick down from you pressing harder on the throttle, it takes an exceptionally long time to go back to overdrive when you let off of the throttle. There were times where I had to almost lift my foot completely off of the throttle just to get the car to go back into overdrive. Damn slushboxes. When I used the kick down button, it wasn’t as bad since the car would go back into overdrive almost immediately after you press it again.

Unfortunately it looks like there is a minivan in our future if we have another rug rat.

As far as the Pontiac Vibe goes, it’s likely going to become our second car in the future and go into the high mileage club with me taking it back and forth to work (110km/day round trip). 32500km in the first year. Hopefully it will last at least 10 years of driving like that!

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This weekend I finally go around to installing our infant car seat in the Pontiac Vibe. We have an infant carrier that locks into a base that gets secured to the car. The infant carrier locks in so that the baby is rear facing. The Pontiac Vibe has the nifty LATCH/UAS hooks to make it super easy to lock the base into place. I had been concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get the base tight enough but that wasn’t a problem. I actually had the base so tight at one point that it took me about 10 minutes to get it loose enough to move the base to the passenger side of the car.

The only problem we’ve discovered with putting an infant car seat in the Pontiac Vibe is that the back seat isn’t as big as we thought. I started out with the seat on the driver’s side but then I couldn’t put the driver’s seat far enough back for myself to be comfortable driving. Now the seat is on the passenger side and it does make the front passenger sit closer to the front of the car.

We went with a “standard” sized infant carrier and it’s a good thing. We had been considering the newer 32 inch large carrier but I don’t think we’d be able to put it in the car at all. Originally we wanted the seat on the driver’s side so that the person in the passenger seat could see what the little one was up to. Maybe the passenger will just end up sitting in the back seat now instead.

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Another update on our 2006 Pontiac Vibe real world gas mileage. We’re now over 24000km (damn, 24000km/8months = 3000km/month or 36000km/year and that’s pretty much just the Boss driving it back and forth to work.) and the gas mileage is getting better. Of course, it’s near the end of the summer now and the car doesn’t have to heat up, etc. Suprisingly, even with the air conditioner on it still gets about 7.4L/100km (or about 31.5mpg).

Oh yeah, in case you were reading my previous 2006 Pontiac Vibe gas mileage post, I goofed on my conversions from metric to US mpg. I was actually converting to imperial mpg. That’s what I get for not paying attention to the online tool I was using. I’ll be going back to that post to update the numbers so they make more sense since not many people in North America use imperial mpg as a measure.

Just for the record (and so I don’t have to go searching for them again) the conversions are as follows:

US mpg –> L/100km = 235.215/US mpg
Imp. mpg –> L/100km = 282.4809363/Imp. mpg

Anyways, the best gas mileage yet was 6.96L/100km (33.8mpg) just last week. It wasn’t super hot, low 20s Celcius, and the car was only really driven to and from work. Again, it’s pretty much highway driving according to what the car manufacturers use as the definition of highway driving. Average speed is just over 80km/h with a few sharp curves/turns and some slower driving through town.

The Pontiac Vibe just doesn’t do well on what I consider real world highway driving - about 110km/h with the cruise control set and straight, relatively flat roads. That’s my commute and I was getting much worse gas mileage than the Boss. Maybe I should give it another run here for a week and see what it does now that the weather is more pleasant than when I was driving the Pontiac Vibe back in February.

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We’re over 20,000km on the 2006 Pontiac Vibe now and the gas mileage is getting better. Even with the warmer temperatures and use of the air conditioning a fair bit our average gas mileage is 8.29L/100km (or about 28.4mpg if I did the math right) over about 18,000km. We’ve been tracking the Pontiac Vibe gas mileage since we bought the car and we keep entering the data into a spreadsheet. Makes it really easy to see how various things affect the gas mileage.

Currently the worst gas mileage we have gotten with the Vibe was 9.5L/100km (24.7mpg) (in mid February) and the best gas mileage was 7.1L/100km (33.1mpg) (in mid May and June). I also track a 5 fillup trend in my spreadsheet which makes it a little bit easier to see seasonal gas mileage. For example, the 5 fillups to the end of February averaged 9.0L/100km where as the 5 fillups to the end of June averaged 7.4L/100km.

If I ever get around to it, I’d like to put all of this information online as it’s very difficult to find real world gas mileage information. Since I’ve been tracking for all of my vehicles, I think it might be of use to someone in the future who is looking for more realistic numbers than what the window stickers say.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, this is a base Pontiac Vibe with an automatic transmission, air conditioning and cruise control. Almost all (90% minimum) of the driving would be considered highway driving. The car typically goes 50+ km one way to work 5 days a week on secondary roads (80km/h speed limit). It sees on average another 150km additional highway driving on the weekends (on 400 series highways in Eastern Ontario).

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