Amazing Top Gear Fuel economy Challenge
 

Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC's Top Gear performs a gas mileage test in an Audi A8 TDI. He manages to drive it 800 miles on about 20 gallons of fuel. I want one.
Part 1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7AKJAu3D...elated&search=

Part 2

https://youtube.com/watch?v=67JGUbM2k...elated&search=




-The Shark

Very interesting, good watch. I like how he stressed the basics like no breaks and how to drive on hills. Still, he was just driving normal. No PG, no EOC, no drafting, some electronics, it could have done even better than that. Now I need to get one :D, or atleast convert my car to diesel

Moral of the story, clean out your boots haha...

go audi go!!

I still think he could have broken 900 miles if he could keep it all on the highway and he used better techniques.

"NOBODIES gonna drive like that!" That made the entire episode totally worth it. Haha... man I loved that. If only Jeremy knew of this site... or the many others like it. I half expected him to say, "well, actually there is a group of dedicated people who drive like this on a daily basis, known as 'hypermilers.'" Maybe the Brits don't know about us quite yet.

I wonder how much fuel it took to fill the tank. It seems that he had gone beyond the nominal 19.8 gallon capacity. He burned about 21 gallons, if he averaged 38 mpg and went 800 miles. His average never really did show over 40 mpg once he got going... Anyway, nice FE for such a large, powerful car.

If you vent the tank you can put another 2 gallons in my Jetta TDI. The offical capacity is 15 gallons, but I manage to put in 16.9 gallons once.

That was pretty good. But He should have done more FE minded stuff and he would have done a lot better. But very cool for such a big car.

I love top gear, I agree Erdrick, I was expecting Jeremy to use a real fuel saving technique, but I guess thats not his style.

But how does Stig do with it? :P

Very nice!
I saw it on TV a long while ago. Nice to be able to see it again. I think at the time when J. Clarkson did it, the concept of hypermiling was not as well known as now. Some of the fuel saving techniques he talked about can easily be copied by ordinary drivers though.
Thanks for posting the links!

An A8 blew past me last week on my way back to work - I was like "WTF is that?!" I caught the Audi symbol and googled "Audi Supercar" and found out all about it. Nice ride.

Edit - it was an R8.

was it the r8 or the a8? if it was the super car then it was the r8. i dont think threre are very many in the us yet so nice spot! btw audis are my favorite if ya havent noticed

You're right - it was an R8.

I heard the rumble then saw this rear end fly past me:

https://www.37signals.com/svn/images/r8profile.jpg

All we need are access to more of these diesels...the only way I'm getting back into a modern automobile is if it's a turbodiesel...although with the coming stability control requirement, that's going to be a hard sell to me as well...VW better come back with their new diesels pretty quickly...

Thanks for the heads-up on the show being on YouTube; I passed the links along to my motorhead brother, who I'm sure will enjoy 'em as well. (He's currently monitoring a neighbor playing with MPG Caps or whatever they're called. :p)

jcp123, can you expand on that statement, please?

Rick

Are those imperial gallons? Because that is like 30 mpg US gallons (if he got 38 imperial)

I was wondering the same thing.

And what WAS his final mpg? They omitted the final fill-up and mileage calc.. Perhaps he used more fuel than the manufacturer's spec. on the fuel tank.

Ya, he was always averaging about 38 mpg according to the car's FCD. So he probably put 21 gallons or so in it...