THE CHALLENGE is set: get from Dublin to Rome with just one fuel stop. The car is a Ford Mondeo 1.8-litre diesel Econetic with a full 70 litres on board, the starting point is Rialto Motors in Dublin on Saturday, and the target is Piazza Barberini in the centre of Rome by 2pm on Wednesday.
A quick check with Google Maps and a bit of maths on the back of a napkin suggests that we will not only manage to get there with days to spare but with probably enough fuel to allow us to get lost on the way.
According to the modern-day Ptolemy, once we disembark from our ferry at Le Havre, Rome is but 1,639km or 15 hours 11 minutes of driving away. Add on the 163km to Rosslare and we get a grand total of 1,800km. With an official fuel economy figure of 5.3L/100km, that means we’ll manage the trek in 95.4 litres. Monday evening in Rome with over three-quarters of a tank looks a pretty safe bet.
Saturday, 11am: The red Mondeo with its steel wheels and hubcaps looks every bit the undercover Garda car that we tested some months back. It’s even managed to get involved in a few scrapes along the way, with paint rubbed off the rear bumper and side doors, the sort of dents every self-respecting Garda Mondeo seem to carry.
First dent in our own belief is that the car’s trip computer reckons it has averaged just 7.1 L/100km recently and on its full tank has a range of just 748 km. Those are not the sort of figures we achieved over breakfast with our napkin. To bring down the average and start as we mean to go on will require sacrifices.
First, the radio and air-con will have to be switched off. Some suggest we tuck in the wing mirrors as well, but that’s never going to be feasible when driving on the continent on the wrong side of the car. Instead, we gingerly head down the Wexford Road at 10km below the legal limit, avoiding sudden stops and taking advantage of any natural downwards slopes.
Saturday, 1pm: Saving fuel may be good for the planet, but driving like this clearly leads to road rage for both the motorist and those stuck behind. Remarkably as we head south, the car’s computer increases our range to over 1,000km. Could we do it even without a refuel – or is that just too silly to contemplate?
Saturday, 3pm: Rosslare at last. Four hours of our lives that we will never get back and we’ve now been told that our LD ferry has been cancelled and we’ve been moved onto an earlier one from Irish Ferries. Good news: we’re going to arrive in France at 9.20am instead of 4.45pm on Sunday. Bad news: we’re going to Roscoff, not Le Havre.
On the Oscar Wilde ferry we’ve parked alongside a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 from Dublin and a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder from Wicklow. Are the wealthy really abandoning our fair isle? Don’t think our Mondeo will challenge either much on France’s motorways.
Sunday, 9.20am: Stomachs lined with greasy ferry breakfasts (€4.30 for a boiled egg, if you can believe that!) we disembark and meander through the streets of Roscoff, a wonderful little French village that’s ghostly quiet. A few hours from now we should be near Lyon.
Sunday, 12pm: Temperatures are hitting 30 degrees and with no air-con, feelings of nausea set in – not helped by the fact that even at 90km/h our fuel average is only down to 6.5L/100km and everything is overtaking us. Some drivers have this little continental trait of driving right up to your bumper before pulling out. At first it’s quirky, by Le Mans it’s downright infuriating. Time seems to have stopped in the car while the world passes us by. Great stretches of French motorway run out to the horizon before us and we don’t seem to be making a dent on this nation.
Sunday, 2pm: Losing the will to live, we opt to divert to Le Mans to visit the home of the legendary 24-hour race. Our trusty TomTom Sat-Nav brings us right to the track, where we’re met by a host of Lotuses testing for the day. Green with envy at those who can pummel the throttle without fear of using fuel, we turn to the little motorsport museum at the track. The high-pitched din of the Lotuses make it difficult to get back into the oven-like Mondeo and crawl to our next destination.
Sunday, 5pm: That’s it. We’re going no further than Tours. It proves a little haven from our motorway hell. The good news is that our range is still up around 900km, according to the trip computer.
Monday, 8.30am: Right. France is not going to get the better of us. We’re going to get out of here by Mondeo or mule. The slow crawl to Rome begins again, but this time we know to respect the size of France. Years of flying over it lulled us into a stupid sense that it was small. Now, at these speeds, it seems the size of Russia.
Monday, 9.50am: Seriously, do people do this sort of drive for a holiday? With giddy children in the back? Sado-masochism has a bigger following than we thought.
Monday, 10.30am: We rebel. While Paddy sleeps I break free from the shackles of fuel savings and for 10 glorious minutes I throw caution to the wind and sit at 130km/h on the motorway, overtaking trucks. I’m only human. I couldn’t handle it. Sitting between two trucks as a Dacia Logan whizzed by, I gave in to my natural instincts. A quick stop-off at an Autogrill seems in order to get us back to our senses.
Monday, 11.40am: We are agreed: filling station sandwiches are vile, French crisps are flavourless and Ford were clearly seeking revenge for something we previously wrote about them when they came up with this challenge. To compensate for the earlier excess, I’m now driving at a snail’s pace when there is no one behind me in order to conserve fuel.
We’ve got 260km to get to Lyon, but another night in France would be regarded as failure. We have to get out of here to signify some progress. Geneva adds another 90km to the journey if we change route, but our fuel average is down to 6.1L/100km now and the Swiss city is still within range. The car’s computer reckons we have 370km, so we should pull in there on fumes if nothing else. No room for a Sat-Nav diversion, however.
Monday, 5pm: Crossing into Switzerland. According to the glorious Google Maps, the journey from Tours should have taken us five hours 59 minutes. We’ve made it out of France, however, and that deserves some form of celebration. Refuelling will wait until tomorrow.
Tuesday, 9am: Back on the road, at least if we can find our way out of here. The TomTom Sat-Nav has been a solid – if rather annoying – guide so far, but Geneva’s criss-crossing city centre streets seems to have it muddled. We’ve got about 30km of fuel left so we need to stop.
Tuesday, 10am: A full tank and empty roads, what more could we ask for? Perhaps the chance to put both to better use. Mont Blanc beckons and our crawl across Europe continues.
Tuesday, 11am: The ascent to the famous tunnel has a dramatic effect on our fuel range according to the car’s computer. It proves we could never have made it all the way on one tank. On the other side, the range is increasing by about one kilometre every 20 seconds. What it seems to prove is that trying to average out your range or consumption is a thankless task.
We’re now in the midst of a torrential downpour, which normally would depress any eager sunseeking tourist, but in an unair-conditioned car anything that keeps down the heat – and smells – is a welcome relief.
Tuesday, 12pm: As Italian road signs take over from French, Florence is our next port of call. We have to stop off to do some work along the way, but if it’s anything like France then all the service stations will have some form of WiFi.
Tuesday, 2pm: No one seems to offer WiFi, so we make a beeline for Milan Malpensa airport. The problem now is that despite our best intentions, there is no realistic way we can keep below 110km/h on the autostrada without being run off the road.
It’s a great excuse to open up the Mondeo a little and it proves that it can not only be frugal, but fun as well. Ford has managed to cut the average fuel consumption while retaining the car’s natural handling ability and plenty of power in the engine. With a relatively full tank of fuel we can stretch its legs and keep up with the best of them on these wide open roads.
Tuesday, 5pm: Guilt over our errant fuel consumption in recent hours push us back to a crawl and it seems that Florence – after a two-hour stop to do some work – will be unattainable. Modena – next to Maranello, home of Ferrari – seems a decent alternative.
Wednesday, 6am: Glorious morning, and Rome is but 400km away. The early start, a decent amount of fuel and good roads mean we should just make it. We’ve enough time to call over to the Ferrari factory. Workers in their red overalls cycle past on decrepit bikes, on their way to build dream cars for millionaires.
Wednesday, 11am: A couple of hours of regular driving, and suddenly the fuel situation is not as rosy as we thought. We’re now 200km out of Rome, and the fuel gauge is warning us we have just 260km left. It seems that our less than frugal Italian driving habits are starting to take their toll. However, our average remains 6.1 L/100km.
A Mercedes SL speeds past at what seems like 300km/h. On the outer lane a Mercedes E280 hangs about 30cm off the rear bumper of a BMW at speeds of 140km/h. A Ford Transit cuts across three lanes of traffic within metres of the exit to get on the right road. Everyone seems to be on the phone, in the midst of full-blown domestics or reading the newspaper. It’s incredible how much you notice when trying to save fuel. Italian drivers seem to be working hard to fulfil the stereotypes.
Wednesday, 2.27pm: We’re rolling into Rome now and though the traffic is heavy, our end goal is in sight. A couple of wrong turns and we’re on the Piazza Barberini. Alive, sweaty but intact – the Cork-registered Mondeo dusty but undaunted amid the clamour of Rome.
The total distance covered comes to 2,318km so clearly our in-car Sat-Nav didn’t follow the Google Maps route. Total fuel used comes to just under 135 litres, significantly more than estimated but still within the required challenge of one fuel stop. We have to admit that we didn’t drive as gingerly towards the end as we might have done.
While there was never any way we could do it on one tank, a lighter foot in Italy could have saved us some fuel.
The Mondeo was well up to the task, but so we suspect are many of its rivals. However, the cost savings over flying are not that clear. Several of the tolls we crossed cost us €20-€30. Put them all together and they add up to more than the cost of the flight from Dublin for at least one passenger, if not a carful.
There is also no way that you can retain your sanity while maintaining the hyper-mile mentality. The journey did make us far more conscious of the fuel gauge than we have ever been, and you get to see where you can save on fuel. Perhaps car firms should make fuel usage figures more prominent on the dashboards, up there as digital readings with the rev counter.
The trip proves the Mondeo can maintain a very good fuel economy over a long run. We struggled to find things we didn’t like about the car, or an alternative in its class that we would choose over it. It’s spacious, comfortable and handles well. It’s just not quite as quick as Aer Lingus.
Road to Rome: Some essentials
We used the TomTom One IQ Route Edition, €199.
It might have come with a pretty annoying voice but you can always change that, and without this device foreign travel would be pretty tricky. This model, an entry-level one, is really all you’d ever need.
If, like us, you don’t plan out your journey but rather hit the road and hope for the best, then we found this website ideal for getting good last-minute deals.
Priced from €49 with O2, this little gadget proved invaluable on our journey – not only because it has maps on it, but the endless amount of applications meant we could calculate our fuel economy and our Swiss francs, and figure out how to ask for a hotel room in Italy.
Pure genius – even if we are fretting about the phone bill.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
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Guests such as handsomely dressed members of the Italian Navy, restaurateurs from the Little Italy Restaurant Association of Baltimore, and North American consultant to Pinninfarina Ron Spangler and lovely wife Svetlana of Prancing Horse Farms were in attendance. Gathering between the red Enzo (privately owned) and a Black Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione (for sale), they gazed through cathedral ceiling glass out across a stunning array of Maserati Quattroporte and Granturismo modern classics. One was not sure quite what appreciate more -- the view of the cars or the beautiful attire and character of all the extraordinary guests.
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