Sadly for presenter Tom Ford, Fifth Gear felt able to dispense with his services for the new format so he’s obviously got a bit more time on his hands than he’d planned for at the moment. So he went on a drive from Dover to Muich and back in a BMW 320d EfficientDynamics to see if he could do it on a single tank.
And he almost made it. He got to Munich and back as far as Lille before he had to refuel the Beemer. A total distance of 1,013 miles at an average of 68.9mpg and an average speed of 59.3 mph which makes the Eco-Beemer one mighty frugal lump.
Tom does concede that he was ‘careful’ and that he didn’t stick on the AirCon or radio in deference to the obvjective, but even if you knock 10mpg off the figure it’s a cracking show of frugality from a 3 Series.
But it wasn’t just Tom who was out playing at trying to beat 1,000 miles a tank for a Times article. Gavin Conway took a Passat BlueMotion 1.6 TDI from his doorstep in Surbiton to VW’s Wolfsburg factory in Lower Saxony – a distance of around 1,100 miles there and back. Not only did the Passat manage the whole journey it even had 1/4 tank left when it got home.