brickboy

Interesting piece on What Diesel's website about driving to "all 4 corners of the mainland" (Lands End to John O'Groats via Lowestoft and the NW of Scotland) in under 24 hours, in a Citroen C5 2.2 HDi.

Did it in just over 23 hours, average speed for the 1200+ mile journey was just over 50mph, average consumption was about 38mpg.

Story here: What Diesel Car | Articles

Do you think it would be possible to do it much faster in a car? I'm not sure it would be possible, given today's traffic, speed cameras, etc.

Andy M3

37 mpg is abysmal! The 272hp BMW 330i can do that!

BMW UK : Pricing and specification

Would be a great trip though

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Depends on your adherence to the speed limit I could do Glasgow to John O'Groats in 3 hours should the need arise, albeit it would take 4 tanks of fuel in a classic UK Turbo.

Unfortunately I've yet to visit Land's End so can not give an idea of the total journey time, but it is certainly possible to knock a bit off 23 hours. I have covered Brussels-Channel Tunnel-Glasgow in under 9 hours without having to do silly speeds, so John O'Groats to Brussels and back should be possible in 24 hours. Would hate to have to pay the V-Power bill for that though.

dpb

Certainly not motorway door to door so im assuming thats why only 38

would have thought the 2 litre be quite bit better

and no,i doubt you could do it any faster legally

brickboy

A trip I did yesterday proved the point ... 300 miles round trip from Manc to Chepstow, on-the-road average of 59mph despite cruising at 85-90 whenever possible.

Traffic is just too thick these days, which is why you'd have to get the English motorways out of the way between midnight and 7:30am

Wenker Man

38mpg real world average is not too bad for a 2.2 diesel.

My A4 2.0 TDi (140) refuses to go above a average of 37mpg no matter how I drive it.

Actually, I'm tellling a bit of a lie there, I did get 42mpg once, but that involved sticking to a rigid 56mph on the motorway slipstreaming trucks.

My average speed rarely goes above 35mph, so that explains alot.


ps. I find this article on tyres quite informative, pity most road users who have summer tyres are ignorant to it : What Diesel Car | Articles

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

They've gone a very direct route though.

When we did the charity ride we covered 3500 door to door at an average of 40+ mpg on bikes. We took ten days but Most were very long with visits to hospices and that. We reckon we only did about 5% on Motorway too.

Coastrode 3 bikers riding round Britain raising money for cancer care if anyone is interested in the route etc.

5t.

brickboy

@WM -- what model year is the Audi? Is it a quattro? I know the 2.0 isn't quite as economical as the old 1.9 8-valver, but 37mpg seems low.

brickboy

@5t -- nice one, that was quite a ride.

I read that in the early 80s, two Norton factory testers took the 588cc rotaries and did John O'Groats - Lands End in 12.5 hours total

977 miles = 78mph average ...

austinwrx

time to show off

I cycled it in 12 days- with all my camping gear on my bike too. 960 miles in total.

lands end region, ditto scotland- lots of tight twisty hilly roads- lots of b roads, 37 mpg is feasible- you'r not going to be doing 56 mph on a flat motorway.

Andy M3

My wifes old '03 Audi A6 avant 2.5 V6 TDI auto managed 37mpg mid summer over 1200 miles 5 up with a mix of UK motorway [hardly flowing] and rural France. No we weren't trying to race time, but I don't potter with over 500 miles 1 way

I still recon that Citroen is poor.

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

Aye. The good one was being at Land's End with the chart declaring just uner 600 miles to Edinburgh where we left from.... we'd done 2500 by the time we got there!

5t.

silent running

LOL and I bet the bit to and from Lowestoft was the longest as we have no motorways and hardly any dual carriageways even out here in the wilds of the East.

billythekid

I did "LE-JOG" last summer, was brilliant. We did it in 3 days, raised almost 10 grand for charity too

We only drove for about 8 hours per day, so we were not exactly hanging about either.

Wenker Man

No, just a hum drum front wheel drive company car, one year old as of last month. I've told the dealer about it, as have others with A4s in the fleet. Where most of us have noticed its rather poor on fuel. There are also two Seat Alteas (odd car for CC use if you ask me), which I belive have the same engine (140ps 2.0Tdi), and my collegues are reporting the same issue of MPG being in the mid to high 30s.

On paper its supposed to do around 47mpg, it would be nice to get close to that without having to slipstream HGVs on the motorway! LOL

Maybe its the DPF purging? (if it has one????) I read somewhere they inject extra fuel out the exhaust to regenerate the filter. I know that certain Peugeot and Citroens used a seperate tank filled with a fluid which needed to be filled up every service. But even so, I wouldn't have though it would have made that much difference?

Either that or the weight, cars are so heavy these days compared to their older counterparts.

I had a 325 petrol breifly before that, which averaged 30mpg, one day I might get the calculator out and work out how much benefit 7mpg would be after taking into account for more expensive fuel etc.