7 Busted Car Myths That Need To Die

1. Air-conditioning harms fuel economy

There have been numerous, fairly unscientific tests on the effects of using air-conditioning. Air-con units draw their power from the engine - while idling, you can often notice an increase in revs when you switch A/C on - so it makes sense that this would impact fuel economy.

The general consensus appears to be that, while it does harm economy, it makes such a small difference that you might as well keep the cool air flowing. Interestingly, an Auto Express test in 2008 found that on a low speed city route the mpg figure dropped drastically with A/C switched on, however at motorway cruising speeds the difference between having A/C on or off was negligible. The test also found that having the windows open did not harm mpg in any way, at any speed.

2. Red cars get more speeding tickets

According to the legendary mythbusters at Snopes, this one’s a load of rubbish. Their researchers spoke to a number of police officers who all said they don’t care what the colour of the car is - if they’re speeding, they’ll get a ticket. Still, that doesn’t account for whether there’s some kind of sub-conscious attraction to red cars.

They could only find one study into the theory, by a man who sat and noted down the colours of every car that drove past an intersection near his house over a set period of time. He than calculated the percentage of cars each colour made up, then checked speeding ticket information to see if any colour had a disproportionately high percentage of tickets.

His admittedly small-scale study goes some way to disproving this theory; red cars made up 14 per cent of cars he saw, and 16 per cent of tickets. Intriguingly, white cars were least likely to be cited, making up 25 per cent of cars compared to 19 per cent of tickets, and grey cars showed the biggest difference, with six per cent of the cars receiving 10 per cent of the tickets.

3. You shouldn't buy cars from the first year they went on sale

This may have held some weight 50+ years ago when safety regulations weren’t quite as stringent as they are today, and when cars were just accepted to be a bit rubbish, but these days it’s mostly nonsense. Yes, cars go through constant, minor updates throughout their life, so the last year a car was on sale will likely be its best. However, so long as you’re buying an early car that has been serviced properly, it’ll have received the majority of important upgrades anyway.

I’ll let the Mighty Car Mods boys explain this one!

5. Pumping petrol in the morning will let me get more in the tank

The theory is that because the petrol is more dense when it is cold, you actually get more fuel for your money if you fill up in the morning, as the ground will have been colder overnight. The science behind this theory is sound, except for one thing: the ground doesn’t fluctuate in temperature quite as much as the air, so the temperature of the fuel will not change drastically over a 24-hour period, if at all.

6. Official economy figures are accurate

This is one of the biggest myths in the automotive world, and in my opinion, is borderline scandalous. The economy tests that are undertaken in order to provide us with guideline figures are complete and utter garbage; they run on computer software that’s meant to simulate a true journey, but work with the kind of slow acceleration you couldn’t manage even if you tried.

And the whole system is swayed in favour of hybrids, which can run in EV mode to use no fuel at all on some cycles. I recently wrote an angry blog about my experiences with the Audi A3 e-tron; despite my best efforts I could only manage 35.1mpg… the official figure is 188mpg.

If you’re buying a car based on running costs, do your research!

7. You can easily go into reverse instead of first in a Mercedes 190E Cosworth

This one is arguably true of all cars with dog-leg shift patterns, however it seems to be a particularly pervasive rumour thrown at the Mercedes-Benz 190E Cosworth. The argument goes that because reverse is where first usually is, people accidentally put the car into first and accelerate off in the wrong direction. The thing is, you can’t actually do this by mistake because to enter reverse you have to lift the shifter.