I did it this past weekend for the first time while we fled from hurricane Rita.

The car handled well in grass. I drove it about 25 mph crossing over from I10 East to I10 West. It took inclines well also.

In any normal circumstance I would have never done this, but desperate times call for desperate actions.

BTW, I got 6 miles on 10 gallons of gas going to San Antonio and averaged 32.1 mpg on the way back. I guess my old mpg problem was the amount of short distances I was driving before.

 

How many miles on how many gallons?

 

I am not sure. I am still have over a half tank left and I have gotten 225+ so far

 

yeah that about sucks...and not much happened over there anyway! lol...my cousin took 17 hours to get to san antonio and she left really early from houston....it ususally takes ~3 hours....like i said before, i'm glad my evacuation for katrina wasn't that bad...14 1/2 hours to get to san antonio from here, where it usually takes 8...not bad if you ask me

 

I thought he said he only got 6 miles w/ 10 gallon gas

 

I'm curious about this because we live in Houston too, and were pondering making the drive. So did you literally burn through ten gallons of gas and only went 6 miles? Or (hopefully) is there a typo somewhere in here (like 6 mpg, or 60 miles on ten gallons)?

 

no typo i bet....sounds about right.....many people got even less than that so....I ended up leaving Thurs at like 4 when they opened up the contraflow lanes and with the aid of Microsoft Streets & Trips was able to make it to Austin before 10pm with a dinner stop in Bastrop. I got really lucky, but I feel bad for those who didn't have the advantages I did and had to spend 12-16 hours to make a 150 mile drive. Oh well, hopefully next time we will have some organization amid all the chaos.

 

my cousin got to san antonio on 1/2 tank in her civic...did you ever shut your car off when you were stopped? i didn't think it would use quite so much gas, but after 20+ hours of continuous running, it could be possible...

 

This must be one of the first "off road" reviews a Max has ever gotten. Yeah, Im guessing a little typo on the fuel mileage as well. Glad to hear you were safe though from the hurricane.

 

That's what I read. Must have been a typo.

 

I also drove 5 miles out the morning of Thursday and used nearly 1/8th tank of gas so i drove back home. Tried again at night and there was no car in sight (hwy 6/90/395). Made for a very good drive. It helps to take backroads and farm roads around Houston - especially when 95% of the people tend to think the Freeway is the fastest way to get anywhere.

 

no typo guys. We litterally would go maybe 20 feet per hour that day. It was terrible. I shut the car off a lot becuase no one was moving.

 

Did they use the other side of the highway?

 

i commented on that to a lot of my friends when we were watching the evacuation on TV. bumper to bumper for miles on one side and the other side was vacant, cuz obviously NO ONE is going into houston. i couldnt understand why they didnt open the other side, and make the few people going into houston use surface streets and stuff.

 

they did open the contraflow lane later. I used both. problem is you never got to see what mile you were on becuase the signs faced the other way.

 

I wouldn't care what mile I was on as long as I got the hell out of there.

 

20 ft per hour...jesus!

 

that would be pretty weird using an on-ramp as an off-ramp, lol. About offroading-- I was once forced to go through a really big mud-puddle in upstate NY one time in our old 99 i30, I almost didn't make it, I had to bomb through it, bouncing rev-limiter, both tires were throwing mud so high that it was splattered all over the roof and even a little on the hood, somebody somewhere has a picture of it afterwards, I wish I had that picture. I occasionally drive a 2wd v-8 extended cab toyota tundra and there is no way that truck would have been able to make it through that much mud.

 

oh when u get on the contra flow lanes a bunch of morons will think that the fast lane is on the left but its actually on the INNER LANE not the outer... stupid rednecks from alabama.... this was on I-65 every time we evacuate... Ivan,Dennis,Katrina.