To all you Malibu Maxx lovers:

I am one also. Great family car with teenage kids and their adult sized
legs.

However, I am disappointed with the gas mileage for my Malibu Maxx LT
(3500 V6 engine). I had been told that it takes a while for a car to
break in and that I should expect less efficiency for the first several
thousand miles. But I've been in the car almost a year and I've driven
it over 10,000 miles at this point. And now I want some answers -- or
at least some thoughts from this group.

I read that people are seeing 22/23 mpg overall. I try to drive
conservatively and I rarely get better than 18 mpg on my 10 mile
city-street commute -- even if I warm up the car. My wife, on the other
hand, accelerates toward stop signs and she typically gets 15 mpg. She
is up on the interstate more than I am so I expected better despite her
lead-foot.

I want to rule out a couple of things.

(1) I haven't properly measured gas mileage on a couple of full tanks
of gas. I've been relying on the computer's real-time fuel efficiency
read-out. Do you folks find the computer accurate? (Hopefully it's not
and I'm making something out of nothing.)

(2) Are my expectations out of whack? This car has a lot of power for
its size? Am I wrong that others are getting 22/23 overall mpg?

(3) Third, am I right that the 3.5L V6 is the only engine available in
this car? Or do I have a suped-up version of the Maxx?

So otherwise, can anybody recommend anything that I can check out?
Maybe something's wrong with the computer-controled systems? Anybody
else experience this type of fuel efficiency?

Thanks for your comments!

-David