Zimbabwe to Cape Town (and beyond) on one tank

Rodney Kinsey is well known for his ambitious economy car run journey's. A few years back he put in what one can now say was just a sighter by running two VW Golf Bluemotion 1.6 TDIs from Beitbridge to Cape Town on one tank of diesel (that's 1,941km). But that wasn't quite enough. He wanted to set new South African records for both petrol and diesel powered cars by travelling over 2,000km on a single tank of fuel. To do so he selected an unlikely pair – the new VW Passat 1.4 TSI and a Porsche Panamera 3.0 turbo diesel. The article was re-published with permission of South Coast Herald. Here's his story… – Miles Downard

By Rodney Kinsey*

The route was pretty straight-forward, albeit long, from Beitbridge to Cape Town on the N1 and then on to the N7 up the west coast until the cars ran out of fuel.

Over the past weeks and months we assembled our 'dream team'. Initially this included the maestro himself, Jan Hettema – a five times South African rally champion, and organiser of nearly 30 Total Economy Runs.

Sadly, Jan was shot dead on his small holding in Pretoria just weeks before the event. This was a great shock to all of us and the whole motoring fraternity.

We decided to dedicate the challenge in memory of Jan and each of the three vehicles carried this message.

Fortunately, we were able to find Cobus Grobelaar who took the position of observer and judge of fact.

Cobus has done 18 Total Economy Runs and has also been a clerk of the course in motoring events.

On the driving front, we had record class winner of the Total Economy Run, Malcolm Kinsey as well as Con Engelbrecht, Schalk van Heerden, Huibert Phielix, Ken Sink and Rod Kinsey, all of whom have rally/economy/motor-racing experience.

The aim was to get new petrol and diesel South African records exceeding 1941km.

The route was pretty straight-forward, albeit long, from Beitbridge to Cape Town on the N1 and then on to the N7 up the west coast until the cars ran out of fuel.

Preparation was based on our experience of a reconnaissance run and previous successful record attempts with two VW Golf Bluemotion 1.6 TDIs in 2011, when we achieved a distance of 1941km on a tank.

In addition to this experience was the normal test programme of Eco Runs simulating as near as possible what we would encounter in the event.

Also, of course, was a huge amount of planning for logistics – prearranged sleeping accommodation and a repeat call on Sanral (roads department) requesting assistance at various stop/go maintenance points along the route.

This was to negate the adverse effects on economy of the abnormal stop/go conditions.

As in the past they were overwhelmingly co-operative and, at one stage, even gave us an unexpected police escort through a repair section!

Plans and techniques used included cooling the fuel down as much as possible by leaving the jerry cans covered in cloth on the grass next to the swimming pool at the resort where we stayed in Messina.

We then soaked the grass and cloth with water and let nature do its course with temperatures near freezing point in the early morning.

Just like an alcohol thermometer, petrol and diesel contracts or expands with temperature change.

Our aim was to contract it as much as possible before filling the fuel tank.

Tyre pressures are set at the absolute maximum recommended level to minimise the rolling resistance of the car.

Another trick used was parking the car on a slope with the filler cap at the highest point to get as much fuel as possible into the tank.

Then there are the various driving techniques used to record as low a consumption as possible.

These will include good anticipation down the road ahead which is a good safety practice anyway.

This enables you to use the brakes as little as possible as it takes energy out of the car's forward motion and allows you to feed any energy via the accelerator pedal only when necessary and with a clear road ahead.

What you really don't want is to feed any energy in and then take it out again because of an obstacle further down the road, necessitating braking.

Another principle is to keep the car at low revs, in its torque curve and therefore in its highest 'comfortable' gear.

To achieve this on our two automatic cars we would flick the gear lever across to manual on entering a hill, thereby keeping it in a high gear longer and to lower revs before changing down.

Windows must be kept shut except for a tipped up sunroof to cause better air extraction and the aircon must stay off at all times for a record attempt.

We rely only on the natural air flow in and out of the car through the vents.

Similarly we do not use the heater as this will cause more drag via the alternator.

In the interests of safety, we changed drivers every two hours, running stints through all three vehicles including the support kombi.

The terrain along the route varied from a long climb to the highest point just south of Johannesburg plus a lot of ups and downs and a final cruise down to the coast near to Cape Town.

It was very difficult at times to judge the severity of a climb (even more so at night) and an on-board Satnav set on altitude can be invaluable in assisting the calculating driver.

We set off from Beitbridge on Friday, July 22 at 11.30am, with the first overnight stop to be in Pretoria.

This had been a late change in plan as originally we did not think the petrol Passat could make the full distance from Beitbridge to Cape Town and therefore intended starting it from Pretoria.

The Passat had however done so well on the run up from KZN that we decided to take it with us to the Zim/SA border.

On Saturday we did another short run from Pretoria to Bloemfontein where we got another night's rest, leaving at 3am on Sunday morning for the long haul to Cape Town and beyond.

Along the way near Paarl we met a representative of CAR magazine who went with the Passat until it ran out of fuel on the N7 approaching Moorreesburg.

We had cracked the 2000km barrier in the VW Passat and all of us were thrilled. Actual distance done on a tank was 2029km. Consumption 4.1l per 100km.

The Panamera was quite stubborn and enjoyed stretching its big legs.

We reported our position to the local police station at Piketsburg, where the local SAPS enjoyed coming out for a photo session, before doing an about turn on the N7 heading back towards Cape Town.

We finally ran out near the Mother City at a total distance of 2201km, consumption 4.9l per 100km.

It had been a wonderful and successful challenge, with two new SA records in our pocket.

We were all weary as it was after 10pm on Sunday night. In a happy mood after refuelling we set off for our hotel in Cape Town to celebrate!

• Rodney Kinsey owns a VW/Audi dealership down the South Coast of KZN.