Left for vacation the other day for the mountains of Vermont. Normally get
about 30 mpg highway on flat ground. With the rooftop carrier and a kayak,
mpg went down to about 26 which isn't as bad as I had anticipated. What
really surprised me though is when we unloaded and went up a few steep
grades, it seemed darned under-powered. Tried both automatic and manually
shifting, trying to find the best control strategy. It's got the 2.5L EcoTec
and base model 4-spd auto trans. Granted I'm accustomed to the LW300's
power.