Diesel MINI Does One Million Kilometers With Original Engine
Article Summary
- This Volcanic Orange MINI Cooper D covered one million kilometers in the last 12 years.
- The milestone was achieved in the heart of MINI at the Oxford plant in the UK.
- Peter Kirchoff, the car’s owner, now wants to hit one million miles.
They say modern cars come with a built-in expiration date. However, the owner of a MINI Cooper D has just proved the skeptics wrong. Peter Kirchoff has been driving his Volcanic Orange F56 since 2014 and has racked up one million kilometers during 12 years of ownership. Covering 621,371 miles is no small feat in a car primarily intended for city driving. But that’s the thing: the three-door hatch wasn’t confined to the urban jungle.
Its dedicated owner has taken it just about everywhere, traveling through no fewer than 25 countries. Fuel consumption has been nothing short of stellar. The three-cylinder, 1.5-liter diesel has averaged a remarkably low 2.95 liters/100 km, which equates to nearly 80 miles per gallon. That honestly sounds too good to be true, even for a small, lightweight diesel car. This Cooper D still uses the original B37 engine it had when it left the factory a dozen years ago. Peter says his prized possession has never undergone major repairs and has never been involved in an accident.
The owner has been documenting the Cooper D’s mile-crunching journey since the very beginning. Not only that, but he meticulously planned for the milestone to be reached at the car’s birthplace: the Oxford plant in the UK. Despite entering the rarefied million-kilometer club, he has no plans to stop there. His next target is one million miles.
His Next Car Will Be A Very Different MINI
Should his diesel hatch fail to reach that milestone, he already has a backup plan. Peter has decided to buy a brand-new Aceman JCW if his current car stops working one day and he chooses not to repair it. Meanwhile, his trusty 114-horsepower diesel keeps on trucking and, according to Peter, probably has “many more hundreds of thousands of kilometers” left in it.
MINI has largely stopped selling diesel-powered cars, but there is one exception: the Countryman. In select markets, the compact crossover can still be ordered with the larger B47. It’s a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine found in a variety of BMW models. Diesel engines may be a dying breed in Europe, but they remain the efficiency kings of the open road.
BMW has not signaled any intention to phase out the B37, which it launched in 2012 and continues to offer in its smallest cars. Likewise, the six-cylinder B57 has been made Euro 7-compliant and will be available in the next-generation X5, which is set to debut in the coming days. We also expect to see the latest 3.0-liter diesel in next year’s 5 Series facelift and the second-generation X7. Meanwhile, BMW’s largest diesel engine remains available in Europe in the recently facelifted 7 Series.
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