MINI John Cooper S Works returns 58mpg shock.

Yes, indeed. And a real-life shock, as I proved over the weekend.

mini_jcw_1I wasn’t doing anything particularly special on this 100-mile journey, either. Simply driving steadily up the motorway.

Listening to Radio 5Live. Hearing Eamonn Holmes interview Steve Bruce. Enjoying the sun. Considering the tactile qualities of Alcantara steering wheels. Normal, everyday stuff.

Yes, my right foot was light, but I wasn’t crawling. Yet, at journey’s end, there the remarkable result was. Boldly blinking on the trip computer. 58.6mpg.

This, from a 211hp turbocharged 1.6-litre… petrol engine! Naughty exhausts and all! Pretty jazz, I reckoned. And yet another tick against my turbo engine theory.

mini_jcw_2That they’re super-economical when you drive them economically. But thirstier than Richard Burton when on it. Disproportionally so. Jekyll and Hyde. And so on.

Car makers know this. And this is why modern turbo petrol engines always do really well on the official test cycle.That’s something conducted in a genteel manner not dissimilar to how I drove last Saturday.

But what’s real in my world, and the world of Euro-MPG test drivers, isn’t in the vast majority of turbo petrol drivers. Hence, the disparity in economy many report.

It’s a theory I’m going to run with, and put to the next engine, err, engineer I meet…

MINI John Cooper S Works photostream on Flickr

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