The Blue Oval cut $550 checks for C-Max buyers and $325 checks for those who leased the newer model. Do that math, and that $550 buys about 157 gallons of gas (using AAA’s current average gas price estimate of about $3.50). With the C-Max hybrid now rated at 43 miles per gallon, that fuel buys about 6,700 miles of driving, or about six months for a typical American. Of course, it’s that 43 mpg rating that got Ford into trouble in the first place. Ford had originally rated the C-Max Hybrid at 47 mpg combined before bringing that figure down by four mpg in August. Ford estimated then that it would send checks out to about 32,000 C-Max owners and lessees.
During Autoblog‘s week-long review of the C-Max this spring, the car averaged about 36 mpg. Ford says its put software improvements in some of the cars in order to boost fuel economy and is making engineering improvements in the 2014 model-year edition to further increase gas mileage.
