First drive: HSV LPG is fast and economical

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First drive: HSV LPG is fast and economical



While the thought of a performance car running on LPG seems a bit odd, you need to forget everything you know about old-school LPG conversions as they applied to taxis.

The sophistication of HSV’s LPi (liquid propane injection) means that the traditional trade-offs of LPG are simply non-existent.

Drive drove a HSV Senator prototype fitted with LPi and we’d have to say that if you weren’t told the car was running on a fuel other than ULP, you’d never pick it.

Starting is as simple as any other HSV with twist of the key cranking the 6.2-litre V8 into life.

A small button on the centre console flashes for a few seconds, indicating that the computer has started the car on petrol and is evacuating any LPG from the gas lines to avoid a backfire.

Once that's complete, the computer switches the engine from petrol to LPG in a process so seamless it's impossible to pick even on the move and under load.

From there, the same button can be used to switch back to petrol manually for what ever reason.

Under hard acceleration, the computer switches the engine back to petrol but, again, you'd never pick it.

The car's acceleration times are unaltered from the standard vehicle's because the system reverts to ULP under full throttle anyway. That means this LPG-powered HSV will blast to 100km/h in a little over five seconds.

The only real compromise comes with the space consumed by the LPG tank which lives in the boot, hard up against the rear seat.

As well as rendering the split-fold seat useless, the tank also reduces the available luggage space by quite a margin.

The solution is to opt for an LPG tank which fits in the space under the boot floor normally occupied by the spare tyre. As we’ve discovered previously in a Drive test, this system can have issues with overheating, which can noticeably increase refuelling times.

In the case of the wheel-shaped gas tank, the car carries no spare tyre and the LPG capacity is reduced from 70 litres to about 55. The smaller tank would be offered by HSV as an alternative if the vehicle reaches production, which is more than likely given the engineering efforts already made on the LPG system.

The HSV LPG system would likely not be an option on the R8 Touring station-wagon because of issues of where to locate the LPG tank.

The big benefit for some owners who travel in remote areas will be fuel range. As well as the 600 or so kilometres you could expect from a tank of petrol at cruising speeds, the car should also be able to squeeze another 400-odd kilometres out of a tank of LPG, giving a truly impressive range.

The only thing is getting used to the small red diamond on the number plate signifying the car is running on LPG. After all, the image associated with LPG will be one of the biggest hurdles with convincing would-be-HSV buyers that a gas associated with taxis can make sense in a performance car.