The wife and I drove from New Jersey to Western North Carolina last week, in the TL (6MT).
About 1500 total miles, zero oil used (not like a VW!), zero problems, not even any rattles.
Its a nice hiway car, and loads of fun on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The average trip MPG wound up being 31, with loads of round town (Ashville)driving, lots of traffic jams on I95, and lots of 2nd and 3rd gear work on VERY twistly roads up and down mountans with the trunk full of luggage.

Quite happy with the car!

Brett
2005 TL 6MT

 

Sounds like you had a good time Brett. The traffic is the only thing I cant stand in the 6MT. It get old very fast....

 

What was your average MPH ?

I am asking because I noticed that when I average 70MPH or more I get less and less MPG

at 50 - 55 MPH I can get 30 or so MPG

also have a 6spd.

TL is a hard car to go 50MPH all the time in tho

 

The average mph was 52 I think, many roads had a speed limit of 70 mph which causes people to do 75 mph or above.
That was offset by the traffic jams and some real tight slow roads through the mountans, in one case, miles of 20 mph stuff!

We made no attempt to save gas but drove normal, so the 31 mpg was a very good result.
I think we got up to 33 mpg on the way down, before running into traffic and so on, and its interesting that all the lower mpg driving did not drag the average down more than 2 mpg.

Driving in ashville on the steep hills in traffic with the 6MT was interesting, but no problem other than a few cases of excessive rpm's on taking off...

The low point was the Washington beltway, hour or more traffic jam where the traffic stopped and started the entire hour, no way to roll along slowly, it was a clutch workout, with likely more clutch wear in one hour then the car has got in its life up to that point.

If I had to do that often, I would get an auto trans luxury car.
I am sure it happens EVERY day down there.

On the trip, I saw very few TL's, a few on 95 and 85, none that I remember on rt 40, none around Ashville.
A few 2nd gen TL's, quite a few MDX's, and very few manual trans cars in Ashville.

There were loads of motorcycles, which is what belongs on the roads in Western
North Carolina. There was also a LOT of old MG's, from the 60's, a popular spot for old English sports cars I suppose.

Brett

 

i drove from NY to FL(about 1800 miles) and got around 32-35 MPG, and that was doing 70-80MPH the entire time. i guess the Auto TL gets better gas mileage

 

Glad you had a good trip with the TL. I drove from Worcester to South Carolina over a year ago and had no problems either. The traffic coming back did suck though.