Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Marlow to Milan, on one tank of fuel

So exactly how far can you travel on one tank of fuel? This was the question posed a couple of months ago when first thinking about how to launch Volvo's new DRIVe range of environmental large cars. A large car with a small 1.6-litre diesel engine. That won't work, surely!

Well, the UK's first motoring writers to try the car seem to have decided that it's not actually an oxymoron after all. Settling off from Marlow at 9:00am yesterday morning, the six cars were driven in an economical yet spirited way across France, arriving at the overnight stop in Metz in fine form.

The challenge of seeing if the car could actually make it to Milan seemed to have griped them. Once they realised that it would probably do it, the secondary challenge of how many miles could remain on the range by the time they reached Milan took over. Cloak and Dagger prevailed, with questions of who had what range remaining dominating conversation.

As I write, the first car is approximately 60 miles from Milan and after about 740 miles, is still showing 160 miles remaining, indicating a possible 900 mile range. In a car the size of a Volvo S80, that'd have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

We'll be making a video of the journey with two well-known comedians so call back soon to follow their exploits.
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