I have a lot of padding on my bottom, and the seat felt fine to me. :-) I had an attack of sciatica a few years ago and my doctor said something about it must be painful in the car. I said no.... for some reason, the car was the only place I felt comfortable.......
Mine is an 2015 automatic. The little counter said I was doing 100 kms on 6.4 litres. Considering our gas prices are in the $1.40 to $1.50 range, I really appreciated that.
I passed other cars, on the flat and going up hills!!! (An aside -- there are some really bad drivers out there). I also found that it really was necessary and seemed to work well to shift down to 2nd for some of the steeper downhills. These mountains -- I guess they are the Cascades, are a pretty good elevation. The three high passes I did were about or over 1500 meters.
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View my fuel log 2015 Micra SV automatic: 7.4 L/100 km ... 38.0 mpg (Imp) ... 13.4 km/L ... 31.6 mpg (US) ...