Fun diesel hatches tested

Clichéd truism, part one: you cannot please all of the people, all of the time. On the one hand, there’s you, wanting your coupe impractical and delicious to drive, preferably with a V8 and integrated cherrywood humidor. Then there’s family, which needs something it can fit into without intensive gymnastics training, and finally bank manager, who wants something that runs on water and emits nothing but triplicate tax returns. Never going to happen. Because – and this is clichéd truism, part two – in life, you have to compromise. A pernicious ideology – possibly invented by Buddhism – that suggests lack and restriction. But we all have to do it: give a little on the fantasy to service the reality.

This feature was first published in June's Top Gear mag

The basics, then, in most automotive cases, would probably be a car that looks good, gently encourages the long way home via the wriggly roads, and manages a decent stab at practicality. Oh, and is cheap to insure, tax and run because it emits less than, say, 120g/km of CO2. Which sounds like a wishlist on the far side of sensible.

Up to now, at least.

Mini has just released the Cooper SD, VW the Scirocco Bluemotion TDI and Citroen the DS3 1.6 HDi DSport. All are quick-ish three-door hatchbacks with entertaining handling personalities, all look suitably stylish, all are diesels that claim more than 60mpg on a manufacturer combined cycle and emit less than 120g/km.

Sixty miles to the gallon.

Which makes TopGear instantly raise an eyebrow in cynical suspicion. Bitter experience suggeststhat if you take advantage of a car's entertaining handling, you'll be less entertained by the disparity between quoted mpg figures and the sort of numbers you'll be able to engage with back at the pumps. And anyway, covering so many bases means spreading one's talent thinly, Jack of All Trades traditionally turning out to be a cowboy builder with a creative advertising department. All those who have been lying about their economy figures should raise their hands now...

The Mini Cooper SD is the newest car, perkily parading a ‘Cooper S' badge previously only ever attached to the more entertaining variants of the Mini range. But it's a diesel. Which suggests frugality rather than fun, parsimony rather than performance. Then again, that 2.0-litre engine borrowed from parent GloboCorp BMW shoves out 143bhp and 225lb ft of torque, enough to haul the ever-excitable Mini to 62mph in just over eight seconds and on to 134mph - not far off a petrol Cooper. All this with a combined mpg figure of 65.7, and 114g/km of CO2.

So, the New Mini is actually starting to look like ‘middle-aged Mini' and has been lounging on the unfunny side of ubiquity for some time, but it's still a funky little car, pretty much classless, and costs £18,750. Mind you, if you do a bit of furious box-ticking, the Mini has the all-you-can-eat menu to gorge at: a Cooper SD specced as wantonly as the one in the pictures (chequered everything) will set you back a wallet-puckering £24,087.

The new VW Scirocco Bluemotion, on the other hand, is reassuringly expensive in basic format (£22,210), and comes with decent standard kit, though a couple of grand's worth of options stick this particular £24,220 car right in the Mini's bug-eyed face. It's a slightly more sophisticated, less frolicky prospect than the Mini, but given that the Scirocco looks genuinely coupe-svelte and handles fluently no matter the engine, we're more interested in the 140bhp and 236lb ft that equates to a slightly less perky 0-62mph dash of 9.3 seconds and 129mph top end. Less fast than the Mini, then, but most of the deficit can be attributed to the Scirocco's extra weight: the Roc weighs 1,379kg in this diesel form; the Mini, an eminently more reasonable 1,225kg.

But if it's light, good-looking and efficient you're after, it's impossible to ignore the Citroen DS3 1.6 HDi DSport. The little Citroen may be down on power compared to the other two, mustering just 110bhp and 199lb ft of torque from a slightly less sophisticated engine, it may be slightly slower at just sub-10 seconds to 62mph and 118mph, but it weighs a barely-there 1,050kg. Which means it feels much faster and more lively than those figures would suggest. It is also, by some margin, the most effortlessly zeitgeisty of the trio and undercuts the others most significantly in price: a basic DSport with this engine is just £16,600. The car we have here is lightly optioned, weighing in at just £18,140. That's a lot of easy urban chic for reasonable money. Not cheap, but not bad.

Do they work, though? Well, in typical TG fashion, we've devised a cunning round-trip involving A- and B-roads, dual carriageway, motorways, city driving and finally a proper cross-country thrash across a lumpy but picturesque bit of Wales. All three cars look good. It's time to see if they've got the real-world ability to match the impressive brochure statistics.

First up, a brimming of the tanks. Real-world ability is metered just as much on range as mpg - it's no good achieving high miles-per-gallon if your fuel tank is so small you have to stop constantly. The Mini is quickest to fill; with just 40 litres to top off, the trip computer registers a range figure of 428 miles. Good, but not that good. The DS3 is next, with a more reasonable 48-litre tank and projected 510-mile range, beaten by the Scirocco and its relatively generous 55-litre tank. That slightly bigger fuel load means the Scirocco predicts a rather lovely 535-mile range, based loosely on the previous few miles of driving.

On the following slow trawl through limited-speed A-roads and dual-carriageway cruising, all three cars significantly increase their projected ranges, all three consistently registering mid-seventies mpg thanks to leggy gearing and torquey, diesellish delivery. It might be boring, but driven tidily, all three cars sip rather than suck and do so with remarkable ease. The DS3 feels lighter and slightly tinny compared to the Mini, both a good league away from the Scirocco's masterful ability to cover artery miles in gentle, big-car-aping comfort.

The VW feels very much like the MkV Golf on which it is based: calm, comforting and capable - especially with the Adaptive Dynamics suspension system set to Comfort mode. Both the Mini and DS3, while not unhappy on the motorway, feel a little darty and less sure, with slightly fretful ride characteristics. Mind you, because they rely very little on revs to produce forward momentum, the generous diesel turbo torque on offer from all three means pleasurable cruising. You'll have to drop a gear in the DS3 where either the Mini or VW will happily pull in sixth, but generally there's a lack of noise or excitement that makes serious distance decidedly doable. All very lovely.

After about a hundred miles of carefree and efficient sailing, it's time for some metropolitan bumbling in Birmingham. At the first set of lights, both the Scirocco and Mini immediately extinguish their engines, part of a suite of economy extras that include stop/start and brake regeneration on both cars. With manual gearboxes - the engine refires as soon as you dip the clutchto engage a gear - the stop/start systems on both work exceptionally well, and soon it becomes completely natural to switch off and on in traffic. After two hours and a variety of towniness, the Mini and Scirocco are reading 55.3mpg and 51.2mpg respectively: impressive around town. The baby-blue DS3 has no stop/start function or brake regen, though it doesn't seem to matter - the little Citroen not only gets the most appreciative drive-by attention, but actually manages 61.4mpg on exactly the same route as the other two cars, while feeling nimble and punchy from traffic-light drags. Now that's impressive.

The Mini also shines in the city: low-down torque and a surprisingly sonorous diesel engine make it untouchable for dashing about. Add to that immensely accurate steering and a stiff-ish suspension arrangement, and the Mini becomes the car to have when you need to go trans-urban. The Scirocco? Fine. But it feels bigger, less pointy than the other two. A little more stately. Nothing wrong with it, but the blind spots caused by the coupe-lite body feel bigger in the big city, and the VW feels less threadable because of that.

City done, time for Wales. After all, if they're as much fun to drive down a twisty road as a flock of sheep, then they don't meet one of the major compromise criteria. So we point west and floor it.

The aim here is to... er... ‘make progress in a spirited manner' and see how low we can push the mpg figures of our triplets. And Wales is the place to do it. Tight and twisty, open and sweeping, the Welsh countryside provides an almost deserted backdrop on which to paint little dieselly blurs.

The headline news is that all three cars are fun. There's no getting away from it: you do have to drive in a diesel-sympathetic manner: take a gear up and surf the low-down torque rather than ride top-end power, but you'll be smiling anyway. It's not the rictus, adrenaline-wedged grin you'll get in a proper hot hatch or fast saloon, but you can definitely enjoy yourself. And the associated fear of a prang is commensurately less in a diesel hatch.

The Scirocco, much as it has all day, behaves impeccably, soaking up bumps - even in ‘Sport' mode - running wide and allowing slight oversteery correction with a lift of throttle. Pacey rather than quick, it still makes a decent fist of slightly sober fun. The DS3 never really gets left behind either, feeling punky - albeit a bit tall in this company - and vivacious. It sounds more like a diesel than the other two, reacts with slightly more lag and needs more effort, but the basic chassis is a joy - again, it slashes a grin on your face where you fear there might have been a wry smile.

But it's here that the Mini really puts the smackdown on the other two cars. Mainly because it really does feel like it deserves the Cooper S badge. Hit the Sport button, and there's proper communication through the steering and seats, a motor that zings - yes, really - through the rev-range. The SD is a potent reminder why the Mini is still sought after. Because it's bloody good.

We spend a half-day doing full-throttle upchanges and general hard driving, just for the fun of it. Which nobody really expected. By the end of the thrash test, the Mini SD registered a respectable 45.8mpg, the Scirocco Bluemotion a similar 46.2mpg and the DS3 HDi a frankly remarkable 53.2mpg. A total average in the 50sfor the Mini and VW, and in the 60s for the DS3.

It's the Mini we'd take home. The combination of back-road fun, townie hackability and genuine Cooper vibe means that it's a car that makes diesel acceptable for people who like driving as much as they like accountancy. But, at the risk of clichéd truism, part three, there really isn't a bad car here. No longer do you have to ransom what you want for what you actually need.

Compromise? What the hell is compromise?