True MPG: most efficient cars in every class

The official fuel economy figures published in car sales brochures can tempt you into buying a particular model, but those numbers often don't tell the full story.

That's where What Car?'s True MPG calculator comes in. It can tell you how many miles per gallon you can really expect to see in the real world. To ensure accuracy and repeatability, we use strictly controlled conditions, but the tests are based on a real-world route that includes town, rural and motorway driving.

The results reflect what's achievable if you drive gently and stick to speed limits but don't resort to any unrealistically slow acceleration or special hypermiling techniques.

In this story, we'll show you which model from every car class performed the best in our real-world tests. Read on, because there are plenty of surprises in store.

Find out more about how we test cars for True MPG >>