Four economical used performance cars to beat the fuel price chaos
Some will be whincing at the fuel efficiency of their V8s at the moment. Happily there are options for fun cars out there that are also good on fuel
It might sound like an oxymoron; having your cake and eating it too, but there are outstanding driver’s cars out there that are as efficient (when asked to be) as they are thrilling.
The way fuel prices are going at the moment, the average V8 super saloon owner is getting through £100’s worth of unleaded over the course of an exuberant 200-mile drive. The cost of feeding my V8 is certainly making me think twice about blowing off the winter cobweb. All this got me wondering, which performance cars are as good at mustering impressive MPG as they are MPH, when driven appropriately?
Having done some digging, I’ve found four great used options that put a stop to their binge drinking when you calm down your driving. The attributes that make them interesting to drive – slight dimensions and light weight to name a couple – also aid their efficiency.
Alpine A110
- Prices from £30,000
There really isn’t much not to love about the Alpine A110. Indeed there aren’t many more original words to be written about its sweet dynamics. What isn’t so readily discussed is that the measured approach that delivered them – light weight, slippery shape, skinny tyres and deftly-judged, modest performance, also makes the A110 a prodigious hypermiler when you ask it to be. It might not be all that exotic, but the 1.8-litre turbo four in Alpine’s coupe is far from a binge drinker.
The lucky man who ran our Legende GT Fast Fleet long termer, evo managing editor Ian Eveleigh, told me that ‘40mpg was easy enough’ to achieve on a run – our Fast Fleet reports had it between 34 and 37mpg generally. Other A110 owners report that getting less than 35mpg on average requires long periods of really quite expressive driving. Of course, in an A110, that’s always awfully tempting.
BMW i8
- Prices from £30,000
This might be an obvious one, for here is perhaps the only car in the world that actively unites the seemingly opposed causes of being thrilling to drive and fuel efficient. But sometimes obvious is good – just look at the Porsche 911, itself reasonably impressive on fuel when you ask it to be, but I digress.
The i8, BMW’s soft-focus supercar from the 2010s was ahead of its time. It used a 1.5-litre three-cylinder Mini engine mounted in the middle and an electric motor on the front axle powered by a decent-sized battery – 7.1kWh in the 357bhp early cars, 11.6kWh in the 369bhp later cars. It had a carbon tub and dihedral doors, but also tiny 195-section front tyres and slippery aerodynamics.
This made it efficient but also meant the limits were low and explorable – and it was fun to do so given its pleasant balance – even at socially acceptable speeds on the road. The tyres did mean the steering didn’t feel great but once you adjusted to the way the i8 liked to be driven – a flowing rather than attacking attitude – it rewarded in its own way.
While the claimed economy of well over 100mpg was by and large a fantasy, unless you plugged it in regularly and ran it as an EV for most of the time, testers and owners alike report that over 40mpg is easy to achieve, though that’s also dependent on how you drive it.
Mazda MX-5
- prices from £15,000
As with the A110, our affections for the latest Mazda MX-5 are well-known. Indeed, the things that make it such a great sports car and rewarding driver’s car, are also conducive to a measured appetite for unleaded. It’s tiny, lightweight, fitted with skinny tyres and a small engine that’s modestly potent.
Being a convertible it’s not the best in terms of aerodynamics – the MX-5 RF hard top buffets even more with the roof down than the Roadster. But, having run more MX-5s than you could fit in Mazda’s Hiroshima museum, we can confirm they are frightfully frugal – even the 181bhp 2-litre can deliver between 35 and 40mpg regularly. It’s remarkable that this ability is latent within a car that tied the 700bhp McLaren Artura for second-place on 2024’s evo Car of the Year test.
Volkswagen XL1
- prices from £80,000
Perhaps the ultimate economical exotic is the Volkswagen XL1 – the Bugatti Veyron of efficiency that took MPG as its main performance metric, and perhaps the late, great Ferdinand Piech’s most esoteric passion project. To be clear, this is not a car that is anywhere near as affordable, readily available or, should you buy the one we found for sale, usable, as the other entries here. But you can’t talk about interesting cars and fuel economy without giving it a mention.
The supercar ingredients are there: carbon chassis, butterfly doors, original purchase price of almost £100,000, 795kg kerb weight. Then there’s the powertrain that’d feel a bit weedy in a VW Lupo – an 800cc two-cylinder diesel, augmented with an electric motor for 68bhp in total. Its 0-62mph time was a glacial 12.7sec and it couldn’t top 100mph flat-out. But in the XL1, 50mpg is bad going and £20 is a full tank, not a top-up.
Okay, the XL1 isn’t a proper option – it was always known as more of a tech demonstrator than anything else – but we will wave the flag for numerous EA888-powered hot hatches from the VW group. A Golf GTI or a Cupra Leon will see you right on a long journey at over 40mpg but thrill on a back road when the going gets rural.
Bonus options
Aside from the XL1 Volkswagen Group diesels – VW Group were champions of the hot diesel way back when, before the defeat device unpleasantness… – are a great option if economy is the order of the day, with thrills taking second-step. A Golf GTD or diesel-powered Skoda Octavia vRS deliver torque, capability and efficiency in spades.
McLarens – we’ve been chatting with lots of McLaren owners and specialists recently for our five-star cars feature in issue 345, who report that these fire-spitting supercars can deliver over 40mpg on a run, when you stick it in seventh, set the cruise and relax. They’re probably indicative of what many downsized turbocharged performance engines are capable of, when not being plumbed for their performance.
Honda Insight and CRZ – Honda’s esoteric hybrids don’t necessarily thrill dynamically but they are interesting and are impressively frugal.
Renault Sport Megané 175 DCi – yes, even Renault once made a diesel hot hatch. It pulled well and was the opposite of a binge drinker, but had a heavy nose.
