VIDEO: Jeremy Clarkson goes from London to Edinburgh and back on one tank of diesel in an Audi A8
Our favorite British automotive blow-hard, one Jeremy Clarkson, is usually out to prove just how fast cars can go. During one episode of Top Gear he changed direction to see just how economically he could make the round trip from London to Edinburgh in an Audi A8 TDI. The A8 is equipped with a 4.2L twin turbo diesel V-8 that puts out 326hp and pushes the big A8 to 60 mph in 6 seconds. Under normal conditions, Audi says, the A8 will get about 17.5 mpg (U.S.). In order to make the trip on a single tank Clarkson would have to average about 33.6 mpg for the 800 mile journey. He filled the tank in London with 23.8 US gallons of diesel and set off to try some hypermiling. If you enjoy seeing Jeremy Clarkson in discomfort as he tries to avoid unnecessary stops that would add to fuel consumption check out the video after the jump.
[Source: GermanCarBlog, thanks to Christian for the tip]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
thatoneguy 5:33PM (12/27/2007)
how old is this?
I saw this ages ago, but good story/ video.
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Joseph 10:42PM (12/26/2007)
At the end, Clarkson says,
"that [hypermiling an Audi A8] was the most mentally-exhausting thing I've ever done."
It's not nice to make fun of others, but this quote just begs for humiliation.
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Noah 11:24AM (12/27/2007)
And why don't we have more diesels here in the US? A V8 that CAN reach 40 mpg?
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MikeW 1:28PM (12/27/2007)
The EPA is anti-diesel.
In 1993 they set the bar at 500ppm of sulfur (dowm from 5000ppm) That was a good thing.
But where they dropped the ball, is not setting a target, like in a decade(2003) drop that sulfur an order of magnitude (to 50ppm), and once again in another decade (5ppm in 2013)
That is plenty of notice to the oil companies.
Instead we get a jump from 500 to 15ppm (and the price spike-which hasn't come down)
And while Europe was going all common rail, they did not consider the US market because of the inferior fuel.
http://www.autozine.org/Graveyard/html/Volkswagen/Lupo.html#3L
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jake 3:37PM (12/27/2007)
@MikeW
You have to remember the large amount of trucking in the US. Truckers like high sulfur fuel, so change is coming very slowly in terms of diesel fuel.
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