We are now a one car family, not so much of a problem as I thought it would be at the beginning, just seems I'm doing a lot more of the housework than before! But hey I get to have the stereo really loud while I hoover, so a 'win win' situation all round. As part of our eternal quest to save money and to make sure we get the best value we can out of the car we have had to invoke a new practice called Hypermiling. After all the cost per litre of Unleaded is at 1.25 at the moment where I live. That equates to over 5.50 a gallon!

Hypermiling is a relatively new practice in Europe but is widely common in America, in fact it was mentioned on the BBC website as a means to stretch that little bit more out of your car and to substantially increase the efficiency in the mile per gallon area. With the advent of onboard computers and the fact that a driver could see his MPG rate as part of his dashboard display it was conceived that by means of changing one's driving habit s and methods that the MPG could be significantly raised to the extent that a tank could be stretched to a tank and a quarter.

It is basically common sense, but for some it goes quite extreme to what is effectively taking any unnecessary weight away from the car and driving a bit more sensibly. With the way things are going at he moment revving your engine is soon to be an extinct exercise at the traffic lights anyway, so with the way things are I thought I would give it a go and see what happened.

As I said a lot of this is common sense, things such as over revving can have a negative effect on fuel consumption. First thing I did was clear out the car of anything unwanted. This included the several CD's in the glove box plus anything that really wasn't needed, this cleared things down nicely, and I did the same in the door compartments and the boot. The boot was the biggest area, I removed a work box containing several A4 business folders, sports bag with gym kit inside, but made sure I had left a blanket and first aid kit, including phone charger, just in case the worst happened. The car aerial is removable so off that came, and that was placed in the boot with the First Aid Kit.

If I had a roof rack that would have gone as that cuts the efficiency of the aerodynamics straight away.

Now this comes to the nitty gritty, I reckon that I had cleared out approximately 10 to 15kg of weight, but felt I needed more. Referring to the Hypermiler website, you see some extreme cases, for example,

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