Well as a few of you may have gathered I bought a Lupo 3L here in the UK a few months back needing a little TLC & I have been living with it for daily driving & or long trips. So I have some results on these rare little cars....
It is a fairly low mileage car for the age with only 84k KM on the clock, originally imported from Germany by its original owner when they moved over to the UK. So yes its LHD not RHD as the norm in the UK. With fuel prices in the UK at roughly $10 a gallon!! fuel cost is everything.
So what's it like to drive?
In some respects its a lot better than I ever expected, its comfy, its quiet at speed (very quiet) the ride is great, its not by any means a slow car either, it happily keeps up on UK motorways (70ish limit) & will also bomb along at 80-100mph with relative ease. This is with either eco mode 42bhp or "sport" mode with 64bhp
The downside though is the flippin manualised gearbox especially around town, its dire!!!. On the open road its perfectly fine & I could live with it. However around town it drives like a learner would, appalling clutch control (its automated) laughably comedic throttle control during changes (its also automated during gear changes) so myself & any passengers look like they could be singing waynes world in the mirth mobile with the amount of head nodding going on
Now to the interesting bit, fuel economy....
Wow would be a good description, its mega. High speed cruising 80-90mph on long distance runs eg 100m or more it will average 4.0-4.4 L/100km (64-70mpg imp) always. This is about as bad as you will ever get.
Driving slower eg the UK Limit
3.2 L/100 km (88mpg imp) is the norm.
Sit behind a truck at 56mph & it will do sub 3L eg 2.5-2.6 L/100km (114-108mpg)
Sit behind a coach at 70mph & it will do 2.8l L/100km (100mpg)
Bear in mind its on slightly taller tyres than stock & they are winter tyres too.
However its most endearing feature is the cabin electric heater, that is warm within a min of starting it up in cold weather. Its utterly brilliant, happily defrosts the car in a few mins. There is nothing worse than diesel cars that don't heat up in the morning.
I have had cruise control enabled on the ECU so thats the next "fit" just about to order an OE stalk kit for it. Then we are off on a road trip in the new year to the the Alps in Europe for a winter boarding trip & clock up some more uber eco miles.
I like to think of Kermit as a tool for giving us free beer after every road trip 
Oh & the Insight on the left will be soon in my posession too, now the owner has just ordered a BMW i3
