V8 Wins 2009 Global Green Challenge
What would be a massive upset in a race involving eco cars in a race to promote climate change?
A 6.2 litre V8 winning!
A Holden Maloo R8 did exactly that recently at the 2009 Global Green Challenge. The challenge is a 7 day, 3000km drive from Darwin to Adelaide, where you have to try and beat the opposition by getting the best average fuel consumption compared to what your car should be as standard.
Basically if your car, according to the official blurb, had an average MPG of say 30mpg and you did the race averaging 20 mpg and the other cars had an official average of 30 and were hitting 25mpg, you would win the challenge. Sounds like a weird idea for an eco race and it allowed a petrol guzzling V8 to win but in fact it wasn’t a competition about the cleanest car, it was a competition to find the cleanest drivers.
The Maloo that won the challenge achieved an average mpg fuel reduction compared to official stats of 48% and the nearest competitor only managed to get 39% below official figures. The challenge obviously loves and welcomes the most economical cars possible but they found their niche in the eco car race game because they try and promote economical driving in normal cars. It is a great way to promote climate change problems but I have already seen people taking it out of context and saying a V8 is more economical than a small engined car…
