PH Blog: at home with some range
Riggers falls for a diesel SLK, if only because he doesn't have to get off his backside to fill it up...
We'll go into the whys and the wherefores of the diesel SLK in more detail another time, but here we'll just focus on one thing: range. Specifically, how nice it is to actually have some in a car with sporty pretensions.
In a petrol-engined sports car of this sort, you'd often expect to get no more than 275-300 miles of touring range before the fuel gauge dropped sufficiently low for you to search out a fuel pump.
In the SLK 250 CDI I zero'd the trip having brimmed the tank, and the car's electronic brain was still giving me a remaining range of 130miles after 465 miles of driving.
The key to the appeal of this is that it's just so liberating, the opposite of the so-called range anxiety you get with electric cars. Let's call it range confidence - the ability to start pretty much any journey and know you can finish it in one fell swoop.
The diesel SLK is far from perfect, mind - the diesel rattle is genuinely intrusive and rather grates in a car that ought to be about cultured cruising - but it definitely has its appeal, not least in that brilliantly liberating range.
Though perhaps the diesel sports car formula is a little more slickly expressed in the form of the BMW 640d, albeit at almost twice the price...
Riggers
Let me show you another car capable of 500-600 mile range on a tank.
Now what are you going to choose?
In fairness, I don't particularly like the Merc, I just like the idea of being able to travel a decent distance on a single tank!
In my old R53 Cooper S that was tweaked up to around 225bhp, my average range on a 10 gallon tank was around 240 miles. This meant for instance if I went to Blackpool, I would just about make it there on the tankful. When I got there, the red light would be on, and quite often I had to splash some more in at Stafford, especially when heavy traffic was a concern.
Now, if I take the diesel Fiesta with its 8 gallon tank, getting there is not a problem, and if I'm sensible, it will get home on the same tank! It's just a nice feeling to be able to drive somewhere (especially if you've not been there before), and not have to worry about hunting for a fuel station.
Yes, it's only a bloody Fiesta, but it balances out the V8s.
One day I'll trade up to a diesel exec-barge, but for now I'll make do with C20 technology.
In fairness, I don't particularly like the Merc, I just like the idea of being able to travel a decent distance on a single tank!
One day I'll trade up to a diesel exec-barge, but for now I'll make do with C20 technology.
I accept the argument for a longer range though, I'd love not to have to fill up quite so often. At my current average mpg of ~20mpg I'd need a very, very big tank to get 500 miles and really wouldn't fancy dropping £150+ every time I filled up.
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