that’s it, there’s no punchline

About 80 drivers and navigators in a group of cars from 22 different automakers from around the world all took part in the Fleetwood/ALD Annual Fuel Mileage Marathon in the UK recently. And the winner, out of all those tiny fuel efficient econoboxes? A Chevy Corvette Z06 with a 7-liter engine.

How is that possible? It’s actually a race to see who can most improve on the official estimates of the car’s mpg. The driver of the ‘Vette, journalist Richard Hammond (not Hamster from Top Gear), actually only got 25.77 mpg, but that’s 61.26 percent higher than the stated mpg of 15.99.

Andrew Andersz took first place in the overall fuel economy category when he got 70 mpg in a 1.5-liter Yaris, which was over Toyota’s estimate by 31.81 percent.