MK7 GSW mpg with oem bars and roof box

Well, the big move is complete. Relocated from St. Louis, MO to Raleigh, NC. My wife and I drove out 860 miles with the boot/trunk loaded, two kids in car seats and a Thule Atlantis 1600 roof box with VW OEM bars.

I averaged 42.5 mpg on my one complete tank (hand calculated, our only full fill-up). Overall was impressed with the stability of the crossbars and the wind noise with the Thule box. Very manageable. Was in hard rain off and on throughout the trip and all of our gear in the box stayed bone dry.

I’d estimate that our mpg with the box was about 4 mpg lower than what we’ve averaged in the past on this trip (with no box or bars). Was still plenty of range to only need to fill up once during our 860 mile trip. Love the TDI!

Impressive, we got around 25 mpg this past winter in our Alltrack when we tossed our box on for our xmas crusade.

740GLE said:

Impressive, we got around 25 mpg this past winter in our Alltrack when we tossed our box on for our xmas crusade.

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Love the Alltrack, but will be staying with my Sportwagen TDI mainly for the mileage and my wife has an Outback, so don’t need the AWD. Either way, can’t beat wagons!

I always said 4mpg is about the roof box penalty, with about 1-1.5 drop just from the roof bars themselves, which is kinda crazy when you think about it. The boxes aero design is pretty darn good.



And don't get me started on how much weight we put in the box over what is "recommended", and the wagon still handles quite well. We have a yakima rocketbox 16 on yakima rail grabs with looong round bars (I put two yakima frontloader MTB racks on the bars out wider than the box on occasion as well).

Scott02 said:

I always said 4mpg is about the roof box penalty, with about 1-1.5 drop just from the roof bars themselves, which is kinda crazy when you think about it. The boxes aero design is pretty darn good.



And don't get me started on how much weight we put in the box over what is "recommended", and the wagon still handles quite well. We have a yakima rocketbox 16 on yakima rail grabs with looong round bars (I put two yakima frontloader MTB racks on the bars out wider than the box on occasion as well).

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I think that’s why I was really impressed I got such good mileage with the box. I’ve had the bars on there by themselves and it seems like that was almost 3-4 mpgs alone. First time using the box, very happy.

Welcome to the Triangle. Unless you do your own maintenance, be sure to search the forums for a good tdi wise mechanic. It’s come up in discussion before from someone else who just moved here.


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