Skoda Superb travels 1780km on one tank

The Skoda Superb 'GreenLine' large car is so efficient it can travel more than 1700km on one tank – 66 litres – of diesel fuel.

The good news is that this is evidence of modern motor cars' ability to offer incredibly efficient driving, as traditional combustion engines now rival hybrid cars' fuel economy and low emissions.

The bad news is that this particular Superb variant is not coming to Australia. Nor, for that matter, is any other Skoda GreenLine model coming here.

As motorists are increasingly looking to squeeze more out of their weekly fuel budgets, vehicles like Skoda's GreenLine range would appear to make sense. Nevertheless, Skoda Australia says it still has "no plans" to offer the ultra-green vehicles in this country.

The announcement of the Skoda Superb GreenLine, which will make its debut at the 2015 Frankfurt motor show, comes as a world record claims to have been set by a pair of Norwegian drivers in a Tesla Model S. They managed to drive 728km on one battery charge, considerably higher than the manufacturer's claimed range of circa-500km.

It should be noted that the blokes from Norway drove at 40km/h the whole way... And it took almost 19 hours.

The Skoda Superb GreenLine large car meanwhile, which currently competes in the same segment as vehicles like the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon in Australia, uses a 1.6-litre turbo-diesel engine and a six-speed manual gearbox to deliver the astonishing claims of 1100 miles, or 1780km, between fills.

Taking advantage of a number of fuel-reduction tricks to achieve an impressive fuel consumption figure of just 3.7L/100km – lower than some hybrid cars – the new model could theoretically drive from Sydney to Melbourne, then back again, on just one tank of fuel.

Skoda has made a number of changes to the vehicle to ensure it drinks as little fuel as possible, while slicing through the air with minimal drag.

It rides 15mm lower than usual and features a special rear spoiler which reduces drag levels to an impressive 0.275 in the wagon.

The 88kW turbo-diesel engine makes use of engine idle stop and brake energy recovery systems while the six-speed manual gearbox's ratios have been stretched. Lump in low rolling resistance tyres and the car emits CO2 at a rate of 95g/km, not far off the Toyota Prius' 89g/km.

The new Skoda Superb which we scored 80/100 in our first overseas test of the car in May 2015, will arrive in Australia early in 2016.

Skoda claims to have 33 vehicles in its European range that emit less than 100 grams of CO2 per kilometre and also offers natural gas-powered vehicles, dubbed G-TEC.