When you’re driving to a bunch of different cities and attractions you can put a LOT of kilometres on your car, even if you only stay in one province! Two weeks ago we took a summer road trip around New Brunswick in a Ford C-Max. We took a lot of back roads, drove over from Nova Scotia and went to Fredericton, Moncton, Shediac, Saint John and St. Andrews. In the end we drove about 2000 kilometres.
That’s as far as driving from Halifax to Toronto!!
But we only spent $120 on gas. How did we do it? We tested out the Ford C-Max! This cute little hybrid got us 5.9L/100kms on average. It surprisingly had enough room for all four of us, our lightly packed summer luggage, two camp chairs and a cooler! Plus it was really quiet on the road when using the battery to drive.
With the awesome gas mileage we decided to take a lot of backroads instead of the highway and got to see a lot of New Brunswick’s famous covered bridges. They are known as kissing bridges because in the years of horse and wagon traffic, young men “trained” their horses to stop about half way across the bridge, wait while the couple shared a couple of kisses, and then continue to the other side of the bridge.
The C-Max has the coolest SmartGuage EcoGuide dash, where you can see if you’re using battery power or engine power and learn how to drive more efficiently. There is a screen with a tree branch which loses leaves if you’re driving inefficiently and grows back the leaves if you’re driving more efficiently. We totally made it a game. I tried to get the best fuel efficiency and keep all my leaves, however, my hubby tried to lose his! Even our kids played along: “Daddy! You have no leaves left!!”
Check it out!
On the left is another gauge which tells you if you’re using battery or fuel power and how much of your braking energy you kept for battery powered driving. At least I think that’s how it works!
We had a lot of fun driving this modern car throughout New Brunswick. We even found a phone booth! It was pretty cool to see this modern car next to this old machine! It won’t be long before phone booths are completely gone!
Big thanks go out to Steel Ford. I love borrowing their media cars. They are always clean, fun to drive and they always give me a great introduction to the awesome new gadgets in their cars that make my drive easier!
Disclosure: I was given a Ford C-Max media car to borrow during our trip. I was not asked to write any particular review and all opinions in this post are my own.
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