Autocar - First for car news and reviews

This test appears nonsensical. Ok as a bit of fun, but of no value to anyone wanting to know which is the most economicl car. Driving the Smart flat out is obviously not going to work in its favour. Maybe it's another Autocar leg-up for the US owned brands.

I really enjoyed that and it was a good concept for a race! Think the smart would have won if it hadn't been thrashed the whole way!!!

 This test really sums it all. Very insightful for me.

Sorry but I just couldn't see the point of this test. All it proved was that even if you drive any of these cars really hard, you'll still achieve over 50mpg, which is nice to know I suppose, but what sort of person buys an economical car and then tries to use as much fuel as possible?

Autocar is very good at providing reliable acceleration and max speed statistics for new cars, but it's fuel consumption results have become as unreliable as the official government figures. Some articles even quote the car's trip computer as fact.

What happened to brimming the tank and correcting odometer reading to provide an accurate real-world result? Surely that is more relevant than ever, now all manufacturers are jumping on the eco band wagon, with some wildly optimistic claims.

Come on Autocar, leave nonsense like this to Clarkson & co!

I'm surprised the figures aren't any better. At the weekend I tried to see what I could do in real life with Mrs S's Nissan Almera 1.5 SE.  At the weekend we went from Birmingham to Pershore and back, approx 45 miles ecah way, about 30 miles motorway, but with a few miles of town driving at one end some rural roads and a country town centre at the other. On the way down the  figures by Nissan computer were 49mph and 52mpg, trying to drive economically. On the way back I went just a bit quicker and averaged 51mph and 50 mpg. Result. I'll admit that the computer might have been a little bit optimistic and I was doing a steady 65 on a Motorway for a lot of the time, but I was on normal roads not a track, so I was amazed how near your figures I could get with a five-year-old family hatchback which wasn't especially designed for economy

Autocar trying (and failing) to be Top Gear.  Could Autocar be any more "dumbed down" than this?  Sounds like a new challenge for the Autocar team.... guys give us your worst!