MINI D blog: Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap

Made Sorrento on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. That means we've pretty much made up for yesterday's travel time truncation. A long day but not a hard one, even if we did do something more than 900km, if I'm not mistaken. From Bateman's Bay via Narooma, Merimbula, Bega, Eden, Orbost, Lakes Entrance, Bairnsdale, Sale.

Here's a problem for D drivers, even if it's not actually with the D per se. Aust diesel dispensaries are, to put it politely, shite. Why can you not fill your tank without coming away with your hands covered in the stuff? And once it's on you, it's there to stay. That smell has the power of kryptonite – it'll penetrate the hide of Superman.

Here's a tidy little hint for the MINI people, care of... Hyundai. When you buy an i30 diesel, they throw in a box of disposable gloves. It's cheap, and it makes a real difference to the quality of your customer's life. And despite the razor-sharp price, this is premium product. How about it, folks?

Impressions of the car? it's odd sitting behind such an upright windscreen in this day and age. Good in a way -- there's less hothouse effect than with today's usually raked affairs. Talking of sunroofs, tell you what it could do with: a full roof lining between occupants and the vast expanses of glass overhead. There's a mesh screen but when the sun's beating down in the middle of the day you still need a hat even when it's closed.

The D takes some getting used to in the way it metes out its power. You start taking notice of the Overtaking Lane 500m signs, because things don't work the same as with a petrol engine -- where you just wait for the second lane to taper open beside that monster truck full of logs, drop it a gear or two and bury your toe in the carpet.

With the MINI D the recipe is thus: drop back behind the truck a bit, give yourself a bit of wind-up space and by the time the lane opens up you're barrelling past it in fourth or fifth. There's a load of midrange muscle there, and it doesn't take long to recalibrate your driving to make the most of it without demolishing your fuel supplies. Because this car is configured completely around that priority... One fill from Wollongong to Traralgon -- and we weren't mucking about. We can't tell you our average speed, but we bettered 4.4L/100km along the way. Short of a racetrack, by our reckoning you'll be hard pressed to use much more fuel in a D...

Muttley snatched the D for the ride through East Gippsland, a twisting, winding slot-car track with which he's very familiar; as a result we made good time through there (see above), and made use of perhaps the only other thing the BMW MINI has taken from the BMC one: that short-wheelbase feel around corners.

When I was a teenager I bought a 28-inch skateboard and, after putting it into the gutter a few hundred times leaving its front end looking like Ricky Hatton's a couple of weeks back, I chopped the deck back to 18-inches. It made for an enthralling ride, demolishing a 90 degree turn on the radius of a two-bob bit.

There are parallels here between that vehicle and this one -- parallels I don't plan to extend into hospital territory again, having paid for my overconfidence on that board with a snapped wrist.

Haven't yet tried it with no ESP. Tomorrow, maybe... After all, the Great Ocean Road beckons.

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