Ah! The relief of it all. The purging of guilt as I drove back into green ecoland with my conscience as clear as that of a globe-trotting minister.
Here was a car for Now. A newly tweaked, 1.4-litre diesel engine in a family hatchback that, its maker claims, will get you nearly as far as the government jet on one tank of juice.
Toyota has upped the ante for its Auris in Europe - no word from Toyota SA yet about when it'll be released in South Africa - by letting its engineers find more ways to cut fuel consumption and install a new six-speed gearbox.
They reckon this car will use only 4.7 litre/100km - 0.4 better than the previous version. And emissions have come down by six percent.
It was a long, long way from my three-litre BMW two-seater of the previous week. Of course it was by no means as much fun and I wasn't as hedonistically happy behind the wheel but there is a certain sense of "doing the right thing" when you drive something like this.
Unfortunately, you pay for your frugality too these days: €21 000 (R234 000) is a fair old handful for a compact hatch, even if it is a Toyota, has a three-year warranty and is likely to hold its trade-in value better than most.
As I write I have clocked up 800km and have a quarter of a tank left. It holds 55 litres so I've done the sums, as they say, and I reckon I got around 5.3 litres/100km up to now.
When you consider I drove this at uneven speeds and quite hard on both open road and urban tarmac, that is an exceptional figure.
Indeed, I drove it a fair bit around town in that awful stop-start fashion that absolutely soaks up fuel.
I was anxious not to change my driving style just to improve the numbers. The whole intention was to highlight the fact that there are cars out there capable of seriously low fuel consumption without them being reduced to glorified milk floats.
The Auris is a solid, if unspectacular, mode of transport -- with a bit more driving and room to it than meets the eye, mind you.
I confess that initially I missed my central armrest and I definitely missed the aircon on some of our oppressively clammy August days. It was back to the old ways of letting the windows down for a cool gush of air.
What I thoroughly relished was the near anonymity this car bestowed on my comings and goings, compared with the stares and struck-up conversations about the likes of the BMW Z4 for example.
JUST A LITTLE SLOWER
I don't know how much further they can technically push out the boundaries of fuel consumption. There has been talk of the three litres/100km car and I have no doubt they will find more and more ways of saving a drop or two after that.
But even as I belted along into the night I knew that by driving a little slower - just a little - I could easily save another litre/100km. No bother at all.
And that's where we approach a car such as the Auris in two minds. One part of our predisposed psychology is to eke out every drop of fuel and boast to ourselves - and anyone willing to listen to us - about how far our car will go on a tank.
The other mindset argues that, as it's a fuel-saving engine anyway, you can drive like hell and still beat the fuel caps off your friends' more wasteful cars.
Me? I was caught between the two at various times. One morning I drove like a man demented to make an early appointment. Then I became Scrooge-like - this eco driving can be catching, you know.
If more prominent and public examples of such cost-savings were given we might all tune in a bit better and cut a fortune off wasteful expenditure. - Irish Independent