108.78MPG from a Ford Fiesta – Mind Blowing!
OK, you’ve probably not heard of the ALD Automotive/Shell FuelSave MPG Marathon, as it’s not as famous as the London or New York Marathons, but what makes this one special is its on 4 wheels and not 2 legs and rather than trying to find the fastest runner, it exists to find which are the most economical cars.
The headline says it all here and Ford have taken the laurels this year with a couple of former rally drivers, who over a 370 mile route of what’s called “real world driving”, their Ford Fiesta 1.6TDCI ECOnetic returned a magnificent 108,78mpg, beating their nearest rival by over 6mpg.
The annual event is a test of fuel consumption for showroom vehicles, which also demonstrates the financial benefits of simple, smarter driving techniques. This year’s route through the hills of South Wales and the Cotswolds was made more challenging by a bridge collapse and a traffic light failure along the way.
The super-frugal Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, which boasts an official combined fuel consumption of 85.6mpg and emissions of 87g per kmCO2, proved that smarter driving can dramatically reduce the cost of running a family car. This year’s run demonstrated a 27 per cent improvement over its official combined fuel consumption figure.
Seems that driven carefully, vehicles can exceed their stated official consumption figures and in this years marathon, around 16% of the 27 entrants did so and when you put that into real terms, its actually only 4 vehicles out of 27 and that isn’t that impressive, as logic would say the other 23 didn’t or at least, only matched the disclosed figures.
The event is clearly one where Ford does well, as a Ford Focus Titanium 1.0 EcoBoost also took part, producing 61.93mpg – a near 10 per cent advance on its official combined cycle figure of 56.5mpg, whilst a Ford Transit Custom T270 came third in the LCV category thanks to a performance of 56.04mpg – 37 per cent up on its combined figure of 40.9mpg.
Now by any means, this is a stunning performance and demonstrates what a tremendous job in improving the fuel efficiency of all new cars and vans the car manufacturers are doing and indicates that motorists should see their published fuel consumption figures as a target to beat, not the maximum achievable.
