Shipping 17 people and 15 vehicles from the mainland to Tasmania, keeping those troops fed and cars fettled and fuelled was not so much a logistical nightmare – more a series of them.
The combined distance travelled at Australia’s Best Driver’s Car (ABDC) in Tasmania shrunk from the projected figure of over 21,000km to around 19,000 after one of the 12 vehicles in contention was sidelined and, to get things back on schedule, we skipped two subsequent stages of the route. You'll read more about that elsewhere.
Even the predicted bare minimum distance was around 3000km further than the total route covered for ABDC in 2016, however. And that anticipated distance made no allowance, of course, for wrong turns and re-dos for video production – of which there was plenty over the course of the five days.
Turning to numbers to scare you, consider the prospect of filling the tanks of three cars with premium unleaded in Tasmania with a corporate credit card limited to $500. After a full day of driving, the HSV W1, Porsche Cayman S and Mercedes-AMG C 43 collectively needed nearly 153 litres of PULP at a price of $1.65 per litre. Total: $252.
Three cars, for one day's driving…imagine the total cost for 11 cars after testing for five days. According to Road test Editor, Matt Brogan, the total fuel tally for the participants over the week was 2738.48 litres.
Not that refuelling was limited to the cars on test. We also had a heavily laden Renault Trafic van and two MINI Countrymans (men?) (an SD All4 and an S front-wheel drive) as support vehicles. Fortunately, unlike the ABDC contenders, they weren't being driven hard, although at least one driver noted the surprisingly capable dynamics of the Trafic – we're not quite sure how he arrived at that conclusion.
Just the shipping cost for the full crew, cars and equipment to cross Bass Straight was well over $10,000.
Then there was the not inconsiderable expenditure for meals. Three coffees, two ham and cheese toasties and a raspberry muffin at Maccas in Devonport set us back just under $20. Now add 12 more breakfast fanciers and you can easily top $100 for a McDonalds breakfast during ABDC. Lunch was more expensive still. Then add after hours dinners and drinks as well as motel accommodation for four nights and you’ll understand why the motoring.com.au accountants wince whenever the letters A, B, C and D are mentioned – not necessarily in that order.
Combined, the contending cars were worth in excess of $1.3 million and individually the prices ranged from $41,990 for the Abarth 124 Spider up to $189,000 for the Nissan GT-R.
But ABDC wasn't all about costs and pricetags; consider the total combined horsepower for this event: an impressive 3533kW (including support vehicles). That other key indicator of engine performance, torque, was a staggering aggregate of 6082Nm.
Further points of interest:
>> Not one car participating was naturally-aspirated
>> Cars powered by a twin-turbo V6 accounted for about a third of the field
>> Four nations were represented, including two cars from Italy
>> One of the 'Italian' cars was actually built in Japan
>> Over half the cars were built in Germany
>> Engine capacities ranged from 1.4 litres for the Abarth right up to 6.2 litres for the HSV
>> Proving there's no replacement for displacement, the Abarth's claimed zero to 100km/h time was slowest, and the HSV's was among the fastest – 6.8 seconds versus 4.2 respectively
>> That reflected each car's engine output too: 125kW for the Abarth, 474kW for the HSV. However, the real story was revealed at the Dragtrack.
>> The two cars bookended the field for brake disc rotor diameters also
>> Same for official fuel consumption (6.5L/100km for Abarth, 16.5L/100km for HSV)