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17/10/2008 20:30. It sounds like the most boring race ever - where the slowest, most carefully driven car wins.

But the ALD automotive/Total Excellium MPG Marathon, which rewards the car or van that beats its official combined fuel figure by the biggest percentage, will find new fans in these credit crunching times.

Forty teams of cars and vans competed last week, crawling for two days along a 411.57 mile course.

Amazingly, the prize was won by a 6.2-litre Chevrolet Corvette which managed 30.96mpg - a 61 per cent over its official 19.20mpg.

The best mpg was wrung from a Toyota Yaris which managed a fantastic 84.66mpg from its 1.4-litre diesel engine. Not surprisingly, most of the top 10 placed motors were diesels. The average improvement across all the... // Mirror.co.uk