Nissan Lightfoot Quest Shows Just How Frugal The Almera Is With its Fuel! – Best achievement 33.6km/L

We were invited to take part in the Nissan Lightfoot Quest (2013), which was organised by Edaran Tan Chong Motor Sdn Bhd (ETM) just yesterday (Sunday, 17th March 2013); a contest that featured the use of the Nissan Almera for a road trip that had us begin our journey on a full tank of petrol at the Glenmarie Holiday Inn in Shah Alam to a PETRONAS station in Gopeng, Perak – a feat that had to be completed within a time span of just two and a half hours.

Early Sunday mornings aren’t exactly our cup of tea, usually recovering from the after-effects of a Saturday night do that would usually have us awakening to a zombie-like state; but none-the-less duty calls and up we were before the break of dawn to join up with ETCM and its participants for the Lightfoot Quest.

So we turned up at the Glenmarie Holiday Inn for some much needed coffee and to get the brief for the day ahead of us, with us media-folk joining the rest of the participants for this long haul – not so much the distance, but the time spent to travel an estimated distance of 180km to our rendezvous point in Gopeng, Perak.

Just to make sure that we didn’t have an opportunity to tamper with the car, the engine hood was taped, so was the fuel-flap and the climate controls which were thankfully switched on – the blower was on number 2 speed and the thermostat was about halfway but it was thankfully and comfortably bearable during the mid-day heat with sparse cloud covers.

With the regulation of having only 2 occupants to a car, our journey began having been paired up with another journalist as our driver while we navigated and with our Almera’s fuel tank filled to the brim, it was not till 9.25am before it was our turn to be flagged-off.

With a time limit of just 2.5hours, we had to get to our destination by 11.55am and after doing some basic mathematics for an estimated travel distance of about 180km, we had to consistently travel at approximately 70kmh. However, we upped that to about 80-90kmh just in case we ran into any unforeseen traffic conditions and we ultimately stuck to said plan.

The Almera’s rated fuel efficiency stands at 14.9km/L (Auto – CVT) and 15.9km/L (Manual) from its 1.5L HR15DE 4-cylinder engine, and that’s just what we had, and at around 2,000rpm you could already feel the front wheels starting to pull the Almera ahead.

Fast forwarding to the final destination at a PETRONAS Station in Gopeng, Perak, for a refuel just to see how much fuel we had used-up, the station’s pump measured our fuel consumed at 8.7L over our distance of 180km travelled, which meant that we managed achieve a fuel efficiency rating of about 20.7km/L – 5.8km/L better than what was rated on paper.

Though it seemed rather respectably good on our part, there were others who came in with even better ratings, which meant our driver wasn’t so much of a light foot – well he was wearing a pair of US size 11 shoes for someone that’s about 6′ 1″ tall and for that we couldn’t really blame him.

But jokes aside, the top three participants managed to achieve even better results with third place winner, Izzudin (driver) and Faisal, managing 22.4km/L. In second came Rebecca Tan (driver) and Lee Beng Tan who managed 22.8km/L while Chen Khong Lung (driver) and Lai Lih Mey from Penang managed to beat the rest with their 27.2km/L rating.

As for us media participants, third place went to Chin (Driver) and Sean Chua with their achievement of 23.5km/L, while second place went to Duraini (driver) and Albakry with their whopping 32.6km/L. Top spot went to the father and son duo of YS Khong (driver) and Ian Khong who managed to get their Almera to sip just 5.3L of fuel from their tank, allowing them to achieve a whopping 33.6km/L rating.

For those who managed to clinch the top three spots, ETCM awarded the respective winners with RM2,000 for third place, RM3,000 for second and RM5,000 for first overall, with the rest of us having merely gotten ourselves an interesting day getting to know how frugal the Almera can be with its stash of fuel out on the highway.