[AJI]

This weekend I have in my posession a 2010 smart fortwo cdi. I've borrowed it from smart UK's press fleet as part of a smart-themed weekend, where I visited smartfest yesterday to which over 1400 examples of the model showed up, and I'll be writing a few articles on that, the cdi and other stuff for the two websites I write for, allcarselectric.com and greencarreports.com.

Anyway, since this is the most economical car on sale in the UK, it'd be daft of me not to measure what I've been getting. Smart quote the cdi's economy as 85mpg in UK gallons, which works out as 70mpg in US gallons. Pretty good, I think you'll agree.

Anyway, the car has a theoretical tank range of over 600 miles, and my round-trip to smartfest is, co-incidentally, just over 600 miles. Would I make it on one tank?...

...err, no. Not by a bit. However, given that the fuel gauge is overly pessimistic, I found I still had 6 liters left when I filled up out of the 33 liter tank.

I'd done 433 miles on just under 6 UK gallons, around 7 US gallons. When I did the sums my consumption was about 72mpg UK, or 59.9mpg US. I reckon this is pretty good, considering that although most of my journey was done around 65-70mph but a good 30 minutes of it was crawling along in traffic, another 30 minutes involved getting lost in a town near the show, and we did use the aircon for maybe an hour or so of the 7 hours between fills, and a few minutes of it were done at... rather more than 70mph. Let's just say that smart's 85mph limiter is about 10mph pessimistic...

Anyway, mpg aside - if any of you would like to know anything specific about the fortwo cdi, feel free to ask. Anything about how it drives, what the engine is like... just try me and I'll have a go at answering!