Mr Weedy comes up with the goods
It’s no good. I can’t sit here any more pretending that there’s nothing wrong. Because there is. A man came to my house yesterday to fix the computer and he had a worried look on his face. He lives 20 miles away. The fuel tank in his little van was perilously close to empty and he simply didn’t have enough money to fill it up again.
In the past I only ever stopped for fuel when the yellow light had been on for a month and the engine was starting to cough. Yesterday I stopped at a garage simply because its petrol was 4p cheaper than usual. That’s a £2.80 difference per tankful. Which works out at £300 a year. That’s 55 free packets of cigarettes.
Except of course these calculations are meaningless because oil, as I write, is $139 a barrel and no one thinks it’s going to stop there. Not with Mr Patel on the economic warpath and Johnny Chinaman part-exchanging his rickshaw for a shiny new Toyota. They say it’ll be $150 a barrel by the end of summer.
Global warming was never going to get people out of their big cars because we could see it was all a load of left-wing tosh. But when petrol is £3 a litre – and anyone old enough to remember 1973 would not discount that as a possibility – you’d have to be a bit bonkers to drive around like your hair’s on fire in a car that does only eight miles to the gallon.
Oh it’s all very well now. You may be a footballer or a Sir Alan. You may see expensive petrol as a jolly good way of getting the poor and the weak off the roads. Soon, though, you will be hit too.
Think about it. When you have to have a fist fight with an old lady over the last loaf of bread in the shop, and your electricity bill looks as though it’s been written in liras, you are going to find yourself in the same boat as my computer man: with a nice car on the drive and no wherewithal to make it go.
Of course there are lots of things you can do to lessen the impact of spiralling fuel bills – all of which are dreary.
Weight is one issue. If you remove that rolled-up old carpet from your boot, you’ll be surprised at the impact it’ll have on your bills. You could go further and remove your spare wheel and jack too. Maybe you could even go on that diet you’ve been promising yourself.
Then there’s all the equipment. If you use a lot of electrical stuff while driving, the alternator will need to work harder, which means more fuel. Even Terry Wogan needs a bit of petrol. Your heated rear window needs an alarming amount. And air-conditioning? Turn that off and your fuel consumption will improve by as much as 12%.
Making sure that your tyres are inflated properly will save another 5%, and you know the roof bars? If you can manage without, there’s another 3% saving right there. At this rate you are well on your way to turning your Range Rover Sport Nutter Bastard into something with the thirst of a newborn wren.
By far the biggest savings will come if you change the way you drive, though. Take the Audi A8 diesel as an example. Officially it will do 30.1mpg. Realistically it’ll be nearer 25. With a bit of care, however, you can do 40. Maybe more.
Audi says that its big V8 oil-burner can go 580 miles between trips to the pumps but I managed to get all the way from London to Edinburgh and then back again on a single tankful. That’s a whopping 800 miles. It wasn’t much fun, at a fairly constant 56mph, with no radio, no air-con and no sat nav. But the savings were massive.
Things I learnt? On a downhill stretch, ease up on the throttle pedal and work with gravity to build up speed. Similarly you can ease off the power and use momentum to get you up the next hill. A cruise control system will not do this. It is a sledgehammer when what you need is the scalpel sensitivity of your right foot.
Look far ahead. If you think you will have to slow down, start the process early. If you use the brakes you are simply wasting the fuel you used to reach a speed that was unnecessary.
Already I’m bored with this. The notion that you have to drive at 56mph, with sweaty armpits, stopping every five seconds to check your tyre pressures, just to save a pound fills me with horror and dread. It would be like being told to lose weight by your doctor – and sawing your arm off. Effective but annoying. Which is why, when it comes to the price of fuel, I want to have my cake and eat it too. And then I want second helpings.
This brings me to the Mercedes-Benz SL 350. Ordinarily I’d dismiss this, the baby of the range, and suggest you bought the mountainous twin-turbo 6 litre V12 version instead. But in these dark and difficult times, I thought I’d give the weedomatic version a chance.
The fact of the matter is this. Officially the V12 version will return 18.7mpg whereas the 350 will do 28.5. That is a colossal difference. And handy too. On my old SL 55, a quarter of a tank would not get me from London to my house in the Cotswolds. A quarter of a tank in the 350 gets me there and back.
But while the fuel savings are obvious, I wanted to know if the price was too high. Would the SL 350’s performance be just a bit too wet?
The figures don’t look brilliant. The brand new 3.5 litre V6 engine develops 311bhp, which, officially, is “not enough”, and 266lb ft of torque, which is about what you get in a nine-year-old’s forearm. Couple that with the SL’s thunder-thighed weight and you might imagine you’d be going everywhere at 4mph.
In fact it will get from 0 to 60 in six seconds or so. That’s fast. And the top speed is 155. Exactly the same as it is in the SL 65.
One area in which you might imagine the 350 would be left lacking is when you’re on the outside lane of a motorway. You’re in a long line of cars doing, say, 50, but despite this a mouth-breather in a Renault Clio is crawling all over your rear end. Then the road clears . . .
We’ve all been there. You mash your throttle into the carpet to show that his aggression was pointless. Big-engined SLs are very good at this, humiliating the young and the stupid. And guess what. The 350’s not bad either. You don’t get the Gatling gun soundtrack but the pace is there all right. And this is an engine that likes to spin too. Up at the top of the rev range, it sings, whereas the bigger V8s and V12s lumber.
Then things get better. Whereas more expensive SLs come with computerised suspension, the 350 has conventional springs and dampers. It is much, much, much, much, much better as a result. It doesn’t crash through potholes and the steering is more accurate too. You would never call a 16-ton, two-horsepower car “sporty”, but it gets perilously close, this one.
If you are somehow immune to the SL’s flashy new Wagtastic nose, you’ll find that most of the time the 350 is very nearly as good as the version you were dreaming about. And that some of the time it’s quite a bit better.
You can, if you want, order the car with no 350 badge on the back. I recommend, however, you leave it in place. Last year it advertised to the world that you were a bit Gola League. Today it tells everyone you’re actually pretty smart.
Vital statistics
Model Mercedes-Benz SL 350
Engine 3498cc, six cylinders
Power 311bhp @ 6500rpm
Torque 266 lb ft @ 4900rpm
Transmission Seven-speed automatic
Fuel CO2 28.5mph (combined) 236g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.2sec
Top speed 155mph
Price £65,080
Road tax band G (£400 a year)
On sale Now
Rating
Verdict Proof that less is more
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