With Renault's 'scrap my van' scrappage scheme extended to the end of next month (must have the new van registered on or before June 30 ), this provides a last chance for anyone with a van that is at least five years old to avail of this deal
It is also an opportune time to look back at a story on the Renault Trafic we covered late last year. Two economy driving experts claimed a significant award on the UK’s only national fuel economy driving event, the MPG Marathon.
The pair trounced the opposition in the commercial vehicle class by achieving 58.66 miles per gallon in a standard specification Renault Trafic 2.0 litre diesel van (115bhp dCi model ), which was unmodified, having come straight to the event from the Renault corporate demonstrator fleet.
This was not only enough to claim victory in class seven (medium vans between 2600 and 2999kgs ), but also to take the outright “percentage improvement on published combined mpg figure” category. The light-footed driver achieved a staggering 53.55 per cent improvement over the official Renault figure of 38.2mpg, far in excess of any other vehicle on the event.
This result was not achieved in an artificial environment either. The 400 mile, two day long route took in all manner of road conditions, including rush hour urban congestion, free flowing motorways, steep Welsh hills and tractor strewn rural English byways.
“Being an eco driving course instructor for AA DriveTech clearly gave me the edge,” said driver Steve Heywood. “I simply used all the hints and tips we routinely give our corporate client drivers. Lots of pre-planning, looking well ahead, and anticipating the actions of other road users enables you to smooth out the fuel sapping peaks and troughs that untrained drivers usually create.
“Speed is obviously a crucial issue as well of course, but you don’t have to crawl along holding people up in an efficient van like the Trafic to achieve what we did,” continues Steve.
“We obviously stuck to the speed limits, but on the open road we rarely dropped below 50 mph, which is the single carriageway limit for this van anyway. At that speed the Trafic was just sipping fuel but our pace would have been perfectly acceptable on a normal working day, so it was entirely realistic.”
Renault also won its class in the Renault Master with a highly creditable 44.69mpg, a 31.44 per cent improvement on the van's published combined cycle figure.
Twenty-five cars and eight vans from 18 different manufacturers took part in this year’s Fleet World magazine-organised MPG Marathon, which has been an annual event for the past 10 years. Commenting on the performance of AA DriveTech Renault Trafic, event director Ross Durkin said, “This sets a new benchmark by which other vans’ productivity can be measured.”
Checking the Renault Ireland website, the entry level Trafic Van, 2.0 Litre dCi 90 has a scrappage price of of €12,990 plus VAT. Naturally, terms and conditions apply. If anyone has been thinking about changing your old van (more than five years old ), and they want to avail of the Renault 'scrap my van' scheme, they need to get their skates on because it finishes on June 30.\
