BUDGET GROUP TEST

Sub-£30k cars, a 300 spending cap for for food, bed and fuel roadtrips needn’t cost the world... as we set out to prove

- OFLIC RIADE

ON THE FIRST NIGHT IT COSTS ME £32.25 TO SLEEP IN A TENT. Curse the thirst of the Toyota GR86. Actually curse myself - if I had been able to resist the £2 lunchtime cake I reckon it would be Tom Ford here in the pop-up tent, and me in the cosy caravan.

I've only got myself to blame. The Toyota GR86 is that rarest of things - a good value sports car. There's so few of them around now. The easy thing would have been to cast a net out, pull in all cheap fun cars costing less than £30,000 and see which one is best. But oh no, that wasn't enough. I wanted to find out not only if these affordable cars are fun, but also if you could have fun affordably. So we're on a budget roadtrip: three days for less than £300 each including fuel for the car, ourselves, a place to lay our heads, some side trips and a share of the running costs.

We're each championing a car. But that would ordinarily mean we couldn't swap around. Not ideal on a group test. So we're permitting that, and if you've thought this through like I have, you'll have realised it means we can attempt to scupper each other. Cane someone else's car and watch the economy plummet. We'll all be doing it so it'll even out.

The plan is a lap of Wales, but right now we're at Kidlington Sainsbury's on the outskirts of Oxford. It's been chosen because it has the cheapest petrol in the area: 156.9 pence per liter for the regular unleaded they all consume. I've got off to a bad start because I've forgotten the packed lunch which would've allowed me to cunningly dodge lunch costs. Greg Potts turns up in the Caterham 170R with a bag of scrumped apples, then makes the rookie error of sharing them round. He could have lived on those for the three days if he'd been serious about things. But given he's in the Caterham, his necessary calorie consumption should offset any fuel savings his car might earn him.