Singapore to Kuala Lumpur

It's a long straight road and mainly highway driving so maintaining the driving speed between 120km/h and 140km/h should get us to Kuala Lumpur (KL) and back in one piece. Just between 120km/h and 140km/h? Yes, because we're running in Eco Pro mode, in eighth gear, with a mission to stay this way for as long and as far as possible.

The reason for such low-speed excitement must seem slightly peculiar to you (and to us), and one that actually provides plenty of nerve-wrecking moments. The goal is to drive the BMW X5 M50d from Singapore to KL and back (which is a total distance of some 730km) on a single tank of fuel.

Apparently, someone at BMW calculated that the X5 M50d should go much further than that, given its 85-litre fuel tank and official fuel economy of 14.9km/L. Furthermore, we like the sound of a challenge.

Now, if you were to sit down and think this through, there's a problem in this equation. Firstly, BMW must be crazy to believe that we will be driving a high-performance beast in Eco Pro mode. Secondly, we must be crazy for trying to cruise between 120km/h and 140km/h for a total of seven hours. And lastly, Malaysia is just crazy for having a diesel quality of just Euro 3. This means even if we run out of fuel, we can't refill it because the Bimmer is a Euro 5 compliant vehicle.

Which turns out, according to our talented and bright-minded photographer, the challenge is quite an impossible one because it's a common fact that almost every car falls short of its fuel consumption figure in real world driving conditions. The car showed a less helpful 8.0km/L, with 777km on the range. There won't be any fancy footwork and hooliganism on this trip, then.

Still, this is the latest Bavarian bruiser that will produce a massive 381 horses and a mind-boggling 740Nm of torque that will send it roaring and rumbling as you see the speedo needle hit the 100km/h mark in 5.3 seconds. However, the only needle we will be looking at on this trip is the fuel gauge detailing whether or not we will be towing the car back to Singapore.

Driving a car for economy requires a different mindset. You will have to tap on the accelerator as if there was an inflated balloon underneath it and minimise the use of brakes by anticipating traffic situations. In other words, even if you aren't going as fast as you should be in a super SUV, it's vital to be alert and aware of traffic conditions and the needles displayed on the instrument display.

In the meantime, we continued cruising at 140km/h in the eighth gear, which did wonders to its range. From the initial "this is not going to work" readings, the fuel consumption went up to 8.8km/L, with 521km of range left. By that time, we were only left with an estimated 76km before reaching our destination, which was more than enough to see us through the challenge.

Kuala Lumpur to Singapore

We started off with the same driving technique and in the same driving mode but as you would expect, we got impatient and decided to quell our boredom with some hard driving.

Now, you could possibly understand how pretty damn tedious it is when you're driving in a mode where the air-con feels like it's underpowered and you're ambling along the open highway at a speed of 140km/h. It's moments like these when seconds become minutes and minutes become hours.

Sometimes, the highway in KL looks a little like unspoiled Singapore, with clear blue skies to go with it. But it also reminds us how lucky we are to be travelling on clean, unbroken tarmac back in Singapore.

I can't say it's because we contribute to road tax that's making such pleasant roads for us drivers but what I can say is this: travelling in a stiff-setup SUV weighing over 2.2 tonnes on tarmac that is filled with potholes can be quite strenuous for the back and the butt.

But there's really so much to complain about the road. With a touch of a button, we're in Sport mode and ready to rock and roll. Now at this point, we still had more than enough range to last us back to Singapore. And there was only so much time to contemplate about foolish fuel economy and ridiculous range left on our trip.

Such an instantaneous change in our mindsets was probably one of the most exciting decisions we made, apart from the fact that we decided to take up this challenge. Everything about the X5 M50d gets spruced up in this said mode, either for rapidity of response or pure straight line acceleration. As a result, overtaking manoeuvres are quite a bit keener than its tree-hugging mode, with the ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox slicing between ratios, up or down.

It's only at this time when we realised how much we have been missing out. Left with 472km on the M50d's range and 300km more to go before reaching Singapore, we were pretty certain we were going to make it, even if our fuel consumption figure was going to drop (and it shouldn't be a huge drop considering we were mostly doing highway driving). Driving with reckless abandon felt good, with untouched speeds and higher revs. Hell, it was almost a celebration!

We finally got back to Munich Automobiles, which wasn't too far off from the Tuas checkpoint. The remaining range on the instrument panel read 65km. We made it, and in a rather fast and furious kind of way. We should be ashamed we didn't stick to our own rules for that would have given the X5 M50d a better form of justice in terms of its fuel economy. But that wouldn't have given the beast of a car any form of justice in terms of dominance and desirability.