Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC wins MPG Marathon

The winners of the MPG Marathon in the Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC

Last year Honda took the CR-V 1.6i-DTEC out MPG Marathon playing, and managed to return an impressive 78mpg in a car the official figures say should do 63mpg, disproving (to a point) that cars just can’t achieve official economy figures in the real world. This time it’s the turn of the new Honda Civic Tourer with the latest 1.6 i-DTEC ‘Earth Dreams’ engine to go out and eke every possible inch of tarmac from every single drop of petrol.

In the hands of Honda R&D engineers Fergal McGrath, James Warren, Tony Shiggins and Julian Warren, the Civic Tourer drove a total of 330 miles and managed to do 97.2mpg – an impressive 31.8 per cent more than the official average.

The Civic Tourer beat the Ford Fiesta Titanium ECOnetic in to second place and the Citroen C4 Cactus in to third, with four other teams driving the Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC averaging between 74 and 88,pg – which does show hyper-mileage technique plays a very big part.

Ross Durkin, MD of Fleet World Group, and event organiser, said:

All credit to the Honda engineering team. Their performance in recording an average of 97.92mpg over the two days was quite exceptional given the challenging driving conditions that all the contestants faced.

It is testimony to their expert eco-driving skills that they have emerged triumphant against a very strong field of competitors, including nine former champions, and shows what can be achieved with the current generation of eco-friendly models available on the market today.

All very impressive stuff, although if we were stuck behind the hyper-milers we probably wouldn’t be exactly chuffed, and even if these extreme economy figures are achievable – as this doubtless proves – the roads would probably grind to a halt if we all tried it.

By Cars UK