BMW 318d Review and Road Test – The Road to Venlo – The Diesel Driver
No Speed Limit
Before reaching Karlsruhe, I had to leave the A8 and continue on the A5 for the next 40 km (25 miles). The A5 starts at the Swiss border near Basel and its northern terminus is at the Hattenbach triangle, where it intersects with the A7. The first section of the A5, built between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, was used for propaganda purposes by the National Socialist regime in the 1930s and incorrectly called “Germany’s First Autobahn,” even though the Cologne-Bonn Autobahn had been opened a year earlier.
At Autobahnkreuz Walldorf (Walldorf interchange), we followed the A6 for a few kilometers and then switched to the A61 towards Venlo for the next 340 km (211 miles). The A61 was built in the 1970s and runs from Venlo to Hockenheim.
Several sections of the A61 had a maximum speed of 130 km/h (80 mph) but there were also quite a few stretches without a speed limit. Since I had already lost some time between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, I tried to win back some time. Passing the cities of Mannheim, Mainz, Koblenz, Bonn, and Mönchengladbach to the east, I reached the border to the Netherlands a few minutes before 6 p.m. I followed the Klagenfurtlaan (Klagenfurt street) to my hotel in the east of Venlo, which was located in the middle of the industrial area.
Exactly at 06:06 p.m. and after a drive of 681 km (423 miles), I snapped a picture of the navigation screen. With an average speed of 135.9 km/h (84 mph), we reached Venlo within five hours and 14 minutes (this beat Google Maps’ estimate of six hours, incidentally).
The 318d used 55.16 liters (14.57 gallons) of fuel for the trip or 8.1 l/100 km (30 mpg), coming nowhere close to the EU highway (extra-urban) figure of 4.0 l/100 km (58.8 mpg). The difference can largely be attributed to our high average speed despite traffic and bad weather. When I drove the 320d EfficientDynamics Edition to Hamburg, it used 4.2 l/100 km (56 mpg), but our average speed on that trip was just 102 km/h (63.5 mph) and our average speed to Venlo was 35% faster.
2011 BMW 318d Sedan
| Base price/price-as-tested | €31,550/ €43,120 |
| Drivetrain | Front engine, rear-wheel drive |
| Engine | 2-liter, 143-hp, I-4 |
| Transmission | 6-speed manual |
| Curb weight (kg) |
(kg) 1490 |
| Wheelbase (inches) |
108.6 |
| Length x width x height (inches) |
178.3 / 78.3 / 55.9 |
| 0-100 km (seconds) |
9.1 |
| Maximum top speed km/h | 210 |
| City/highway/combined fuel economy (l/100 km) | 4.0/5.4/4.5 |
| Combined CO2-Emissions | 119 g/km |
THE DRIVE TO VENLO
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