Somewhere outside Flagstaff, Ariz., inside the world's slowest-moving Audi, photographer extraordinaire Mike Juergens and I had endured an entire day of headwinds, uphills, range anxiety, careening trucks, desert-induced ennui, furious cops, the ignominy of being passed by four Toyota Priuses in a row, and the malodorous toxicity of each other's sweat -- which had achieved the consistency of olive oil -- when we finally said, "screw it," and did something we had been explicitly told not to do: we turned on the air conditioning.

The windows were rolled down about a finger's width; outside, the temperature read 89 degrees. Inside, it felt like a Finnish sauna. When the cold air hit my face, I felt a song rise from my heartstrings.

Big mistake.

Four hundred miles later, still trundling along at 40 mph, we watched our hard-earned average mileage plummet. The end, San Diego, the calming ocean, seemed impossible. We felt like the first settlers of America, waged in a war to win the West, heading towards the salvation by any means necessary…

Come to think of it, those guys didn't use air conditioning, either.

Blake Z. Rong

The idea seemed at once simple and ludicrous: drive an Audi A3 TDI from Albuquerque, N.M., to San Diego, Calif., on one tank of diesel. Since the drive was sponsored by Audi, we figured it’d be easy. They must've gamed the system!

Then, co-pilot Juergens dropped a bombshell: "We need to do 62 mpg to finish this thing." The Audi A3 TDI is rated at 43 mpg highway, holding 13.2 gallons of diesel, with a range of 567.6 miles. We'd touch the California border with 266 more miles to go.

If we followed Audi's insane advice, we would have a fool's chance in making it. The route had been tested by range-stretching experts, who trotted forth quixotic phrases like ridge riding, long glide, stale greens, maintenance lane dive, reverse pass, and hard deck, which didn't mean what we thought it meant. We were encouraged to trash talk our competitors. We were told to "embrace the weirdness of the Southwest."

We assembled in Albuquerque, a town that looks like it could fit in the palm of your hand. Cool desert air hits your nostrils, sharp and crackly like Pop Rocks, a true signifier of fall -- a New England staple, transplanted to an ocean of tans and grays. When we arrived, Audi chief communications officer Joe Jacuzzi announced a surprise: "I would show you a picture, but it would make sense to show you it." We followed him to the parking lot.

Behind an Audi Q7, atop a U-Haul trailer, sat a 1995 Ford Aspire whose every panel looking like it had been attacked with hammers by Bolsheviks. Jacuzzi beamed. "The first team to run out of diesel…gets to drive 'It.'"

The journalists tittered. How much was it? someone called out.

"We're not telling," Jacuzzi replied.

834 miles to go, said our hotel room cards. Dawn of the first day.

Audi Chief Communications Officer Joe Jacuzzi threatened to make us drive this thing. Blake Z. Rong

The next morning, Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik arrived at breakfast with a handful of cardboard that he had packed in his luggage from North Carolina. "Wanna help us find our car?" he said to Juergens and me. "We have to clandestinely attach this."

The A3s awaited us in the parking lot. Their fuel caps were sealed. Every night, fastidious German engineers would check the onboard data loggers. Our route was intricately programmed into the navigation, complete with mandatory stopover points. Every car came with a satellite phone in the backseat -- ominously. And a local EMT would follow us in a tricked-out Q5 ambulance, in case we ran out of energy and started looking at our driving partners as cartoon hamburgers.

Behind our cars loomed the Aspire of Damocles.

Across the parking lot, Torchinsky and his driving partner Neal Pollack, of Yahoo Autos -- thusly christened the "Circumiserz" -- fastened the cardboard across the rear wheelarches with painter's tape. Juergens and I got in our silver Premium Plus A3 TDI and hit the freeway -- Interstate 25 to 40, towards Flagstaff, and watched Torchinsky and Pollack take the wrong turn, headed east.

"Ohh, I probably should've peed first," said Juergens.

We left the engine running when I took this photo. We totally had it together. Blake Z. Rong

We dubbed ourselves "Team Unintended Deceleration," a nod to Audi's past and a reference to our momentum. Highway 40 trundled on. Juergens was amazed at the long freight trains that stretched to the horizon, past jagged, flat-topped mesas, a scene presumably engineered by the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce -- he had never been this far west. A fellow Massachusettsian, he bragged, "if I were driving normally, I'd be doing 100 mph."

We were going 55 mph, a nod to Hagar and Company. An hour after climbing in, we hit 50 mpg -- our range had jumped 5 miles to 655. The fuel gauge remained as immobile as a Buddhist monk. Audi, forgiving our reference to history, tweeted: "their unintended decelerating is paying off."

We got off the freeway and onto Highway 53, venturing into the El Malpais National Area. Scrubby bushes with upturned branches gave way to sickly evergreens. Gentle rolling hills, nearly imperceptible at any other speed, laid waste to our momentum -- our humble Audi climbed from 5,300 feet above sea level to a punishing 7,000 feet, and our hard-fought average mpg dropped accordingly: from 51.3 mpg to 50.6. We dropped our speed, to little avail. When you're trapped in agony at 35 mph, these infinitesimal figures swimming around your brain are all you've got left.

At the Ice Cave roadside oddity off Highway 53, "land of fire and ice," we rose to 7,860 feet, a final tally of 49.6 mpg. Our range hovered at 600 miles. Then, as we photographed the entrance to the Ice Cave, we stupidly left the A3 running. Perhaps we deserved everything we got.

The Bandera Volcano, in the distance, last erupted 10,000 years ago. Its crater is 1,200 feet wide and 750 feet deep. Blake Z. Rong

Janet Candelaria O'Connor greeted us at the Ice Cave with her whole family. Her great-grandfather, Sylvester Mirabal, bought this land in 1915, eventually amassing 250,000 acres, the sort of figure that blows Europeans' minds. Eventually, it was whittled down to 4,000 acres. The only buildings were a dance hall and a saloon. "Every Saturday night, they had a dance," wrote Janet's father, David, in a pamphlet. "It was always a knockdown and drag out affair. One woman even climbed a pine tree. They had a robbery but Cecil [a local homesteader] hid the money in the lava."

David passed in 2011. Today, Janet and her two sisters oversee the caves and four volcanoes, including the largest, the 8,122-foot-high Bandera Volcano, which erupted 10,000 years ago. Owing to the recession, few people these days can claim to own even one volcano.

The lava field surrounding the Ice Cave is desolate and eerie: lava tubes, cinder cones and sinkholes everywhere, but no Corvettes. "It feels like a Clint Eastwood movie," observed Juergens. We followed the wide gravel path and tiptoed down 70 rickety wooden stairs to the Ice Cave -- the cavern dates to 3,400 years ago and has never been above 31 degrees since. Owing to Arctic algae, it glows the same shade of green as Mountain Dew.

I held up Team Unintended Deceleration by purchasing a postcard at the trading post, which I eventually lost. "You're the worst co-pilot ever," Juergens yelled.

Owing to the algae in the ice, it really did look like this. Double, double toil and trouble. Blake Z. Rong

Back on Highway 53, we rose and dipped with the hills and soon crossed into the Arizona border.

The sweet spot for the TDI's 2.0-liter diesel, we found, is around 1,800 RPM. If we feathered the throttle, barely wiggling our toes on the pedal, we triggered the approximate accelerative force of plate tectonics. If we let off the gas pedal, the car slowed as if pulled back by God's hand. Back into Interstate 40, we climbed from 6,300 feet to 7,000 in a maddening slog towards Flagstaff.

"See, the key is to find a truck that's doing 50," advised George Achorn of Fourtitude, riding shotgun with Car and Driver's Davey G. Johnson. Across Arizona, the speed limit is 75 mph. Every truck driver worth the salt of his earth matched that. Our chosen speed was now downright dangerous.

I looked for a truck to draft. A fool's errand. To keep pace, we accelerated with half the throttle pressed in, desperately trying to keep up as the trucks pulled away. We found ourselves trapped in front of a speeding truck and up against another speeding truck. Our mileage dropped by an entire mile per gallon, falling to 50 mpg.

Inside the car, the atmosphere grew tense.

We turned on the cruise control. We squeezed the pedal to pace the trucks. And, around this time, we did the unthinkable, we stuck the knife in our backs -- we turned on the air conditioning.

Outside Flagstaff we turned off the Interstate, winding down the mountains to Sedona through tall and narrow trees, on a sinewy road that dropped us 2,000 feet in minutes. We leveled off and continued our rolling road block, ruining a Miata's day. The mountains of Sedona beckoned, red and amber in the dying light, and we arrived at the Enchantment Resort -- where our room keys said "460 miles remaining."

One of about 17 million trucks that passed us. Blake Z. Rong

"I had just as long a day as you guys did too," said Jacuzzi. "Here's just some of the stuff that passed me today: a porta-potty. About 20 semis. Two barns. The largest goddamn boat I've ever seen."

Jacuzzi addressed us with the results. First place: a pair of lifestyle journalists who were better dressed than anyone. Second place: the duo of Johnson and Achorn. Then Torchinsky and Pollack, their name ignobly misspelled "Circumkeyz."

Team Unintended Deceleration -- dead last.

"I really want to drive that Aspire," confessed Autoblog's Steve Ewing. "Think about how great of a story that'd make! 'I ran down Audi's A3 TDI and drove a shitty Aspire to San Diego.' We should totally do this," he turned to his driving partner, who laughed. "Oh yeah, definitely."

"Mike, can I talk to you?" I said. Over in a corner, away from the others, I looked at Juergens and whispered, point-blank: "We're not gonna win this thing."

"Yeah," replied Juergens.

"So…" and I looked around for interlopers, "Let's Cannonball Run it to San Diego."

He gave me a blank stare.

"I really want to drive the Aspire," I continued. "There's a race for the bottom. Steve's competing to run out of fuel. People are gunning for first, but they're also trying to see who'll come in last. We have to be the first team to drive it."

"Not gonna happen. They won't let you drive it."

"Why not?"

"The car's just there for show. It's a huge liability to let anyone in it. They'll fill you up. You'll just have to keep going."

I was gutted, because I knew Juergens was right.

Jacuzzi was still by the stage, wrapping up a conversation with a colleague. "Hey Joe!" I said. He put an arm around me like I was an old college friend.

"I really wanna drive that Aspire."

He smiled, but then became serious. "You don't want to drive that thing. It sucks. I took it around the block when we got it, and everything about it is breaking. You really don't want to drive it. But if you get to San Diego, I'll see what we can put together."

Juergens had set Day 2 in motion -- we were going to give it our most valiant effort. We just couldn't come in last.

On the one hand, it was 6 in the morning. On the other, this wasn't a bad view. Blake Z. Rong

For much of the trip, Audi had told us that Day 2 would be a nightmarish odyssey that would make Day 1 look like a high school joyride. "It's gonna be dangerous," they repeated. "Conserve fuel beyond anything you've ever done in your life." We were advised to leave by 6 a.m., to avoid desert heat and San Diego traffic.

The sky was a black fog when we left at 6:30 -- the world still and laggard around us, a half-formed tapestry of constellations in our windshield as we left Sedona. At 6:52 a.m., heading towards Prescott, Ariz., I documented a triumph in our notebook -- for the first time, on this entire audacious endeavor, we broke an average of 60 mpgn. This success dissipated when we climbed 1,000 feet.

"I'm sure those are the mountains we have to climb," Juergens pointed to the horizon, a seemingly impenetrable wall of peaks.

"We have to climb more?"

"Dude, that was nothing." We watched the support van full of Germans, impatient with American plodding, clamor past us. A spare tire stuck covered the rear window. "I bet that van is filled with diesel," said Juergens. "That would be one hell of a fireball."

We were on Highway 89 now, a twisting and snarling two-lane through burnt orange canyons -- an environment that couldn't quite be placed but certainly had no business being in Arizona. Shades of Malibu, the Oregon coast, and the moon. Like NorCal with a sepia tint. We rose to an agonizing peak to 5,390 feet, after which the trees faded away and the desert floor yawned lazily below us.

On Route 89, we chased our timid competitors down the canyon. Blake Z. Rong

The climb destroyed any elation of reaching 60 mpg, because that number faded fast -- 47.9 mpg, 140 miles of range remaining. A nadir.

Then, the drop happened, fast: the curves were relentless, even and on-camber, never letting up. We reached speeds of up to 50 mph -- but then we had to brake for slowpokes in a maroon A3. Oh, how sweet it would have been to punt our competitors down the tumbling cliffs…We knew that when the thrill ride was over, it would be one arrow-straight line to the horizon, a crawl towards California while the sun burned Nazca Lines into our scalps -- stuck behind Torchinsky and Pollack, who trundled inconsistently at 37 mph while gleefully flipping us off.

At Blythe, after the Californian border, we borrowed some painter's tape and made some modifications of our own -- taping the grille surrounds, the headlight seams, the entire windshield wipers, the latter an ambitious hassle that annoyed Juergens to no end. The effect, I assured, was purely psychological.

We followed the Colorado River south, past farmlands of alfalfa and wheat, which gave way to the glittering sand dunes of Glamis. Here we caught our first glimpse of what it means to fail: yellow fuel cans, filled with diesel, labeled "the can of shame."

And then, the inevitable: at Brawley, Calif., after nearly 700 miles of traveling, we finally saw Zero Miles To Empty.

Later, we took our fill from the Can of Shame. Blake Z. Rong

We limped the poor Audi for a brief, puckering stretch down Interstate 8 and into a rest area outside El Centro. We had traversed a total of 706 miles and consumed 13.2 gallons, driving for a total of 20 hours. Our final average was 63.9 mpg. An Audi staffer gleefully refueled us with about 4 gallons of diesel -- good enough to reach the Hotel Del Coronado.

"You guys," said the medic, watching from a distance with feigned yet possibly genuine disappointment. "Suckling from the can of shame!"

Blake Z. Rong

We were the second to last team to reach the hotel. The entire Audi team stood outside, champagne in hand, to welcome us like we were World War II liberators. Somewhere a stone's throw from Mexico we had swapped our humble sedan for a zoomy red A3 cabriolet, a small consolation prize for our sweaty suffering -- meaning that we had lost the challenge, but in a way, we won, too.

And then, a commotion: the inevitable clatter of diesel. At exactly 6:37 Torchinsky and Pollack, Team Circumiserz, who had caused the biggest traffic jam by the Mexican border since General Pershing, drove into the parking lot of the Hotel Del Coronado; tired and half-mad, their final mileage count was 64.1 mpg -- hardly a few ticks past us. After their car indicated zero miles to empty, they had gone another one hundred miles.

Up on Desert Tower. Blake Z. Rong

Hypermiling is a game that is as dangerous, as stressful, as demanding of your focus and concentration as shaving laptimes at Laguna Seca. You can do 834 miles on one tank of diesel. But it will be reckless, sweaty, possibly illegal and downright suicidal.

We didn't win. But we didn't place last, either. And at the end, we were given permission to tear up the A3 TDI along Campo Road, not a bad way to move -- especially when you're finally given permission to flog it like a normal car. "Well, I'm in love with it after being able to flog it," said Juergens.

The next morning, in the parking lot of the 126-year-old Hotel Del Coronado, I climbed into the 1994 Ford Aspire and sullied its vaunted grounds with some handbrake turns. Juergens was suitably jealous.

The next morning, at the (haunted!) Hotel Del Coronado, I drove Blake Z. Rong

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