WillDeBeest
Active Member
Well, almost 3,000 in our care, including the long trip I was most looking forward to making in it. Time, I think, to form some considered opinions on the thing.
It's wonderfully relaxing. The tunnel route to France left us a near-500 mile drive to the Atlantic coast that, with a few breaks and some traffic and weather thrown in, took almost 12 hours. With seats of almost Swedish quality and impressively low noise levels, we still arrived in reasonable shape, and certainly better than if we'd done the trip in our old Toyota.
It's spacious. I bought a set of roofbars (of the type discussed elsewhere with our own Big Silver Estate - thanks for the info there) but we didn't use them because everything went in the boot and there was no need for a roofbox. There was nothing piled on the back seat or packed around the children's feet, so everyone had room to breathe.
Back home, the cricket bags and coaching paraphernalia I cart around at weekends go in easily, and the boot floor is the perfect height to sit on to change shoes.
The self-levelling suspension is just brilliant. Even hanging 65kg of bikes and carrier well behind the rear bumper didn't upset it at all. (Picture below - I hope.)
It's a bit thirsty - or at least more so than I'd hoped. Dividing miles covered by fuel added gives an overall figure of 35.2 mpg (the ever-optimistic computer offers 36.5) with a tankful worst of 31.4 and a best of 38.2. The car came to us with 37,000 miles and I have a suspicion that it may have been treated over-gently - there's soot around the tailpipe, which I've not had on either of the diesels we've had from new. In France I fed it Total Excellium and located the red line on occasion in the hope of cleaning out any residual muck; too early to say whether that's had any effect, but that best tankful was the most recent, despite the heavy load and the bikes on the towbar.
The 5G gearing is a little odd, to me anyway - and bear in mind this is my first auto after ten years of biggish manual diesels. Second and third seem unusually high, yet at low speeds the box often selects a ratio that leaves the engine rumbling at 1,200 rpm and short of boost to get moving again. No such problems at higher speeds; it pootles happily along with torque on tap to go faster when required.
Finally, for now, the Audio 20 unit is better than I expected. Not as satisfying as the Volvo HU803 that is my benchmark for factory-fit audio but certainly pleasant and musical. I've written elsewhere about the Alpine Ezi-DAB I added last month, and I'll update that now I've had time to get used to it, but I'm pleased with the combination and the way it presents the music.
It's wonderfully relaxing. The tunnel route to France left us a near-500 mile drive to the Atlantic coast that, with a few breaks and some traffic and weather thrown in, took almost 12 hours. With seats of almost Swedish quality and impressively low noise levels, we still arrived in reasonable shape, and certainly better than if we'd done the trip in our old Toyota.
It's spacious. I bought a set of roofbars (of the type discussed elsewhere with our own Big Silver Estate - thanks for the info there) but we didn't use them because everything went in the boot and there was no need for a roofbox. There was nothing piled on the back seat or packed around the children's feet, so everyone had room to breathe.
Back home, the cricket bags and coaching paraphernalia I cart around at weekends go in easily, and the boot floor is the perfect height to sit on to change shoes.
The self-levelling suspension is just brilliant. Even hanging 65kg of bikes and carrier well behind the rear bumper didn't upset it at all. (Picture below - I hope.)
It's a bit thirsty - or at least more so than I'd hoped. Dividing miles covered by fuel added gives an overall figure of 35.2 mpg (the ever-optimistic computer offers 36.5) with a tankful worst of 31.4 and a best of 38.2. The car came to us with 37,000 miles and I have a suspicion that it may have been treated over-gently - there's soot around the tailpipe, which I've not had on either of the diesels we've had from new. In France I fed it Total Excellium and located the red line on occasion in the hope of cleaning out any residual muck; too early to say whether that's had any effect, but that best tankful was the most recent, despite the heavy load and the bikes on the towbar.
The 5G gearing is a little odd, to me anyway - and bear in mind this is my first auto after ten years of biggish manual diesels. Second and third seem unusually high, yet at low speeds the box often selects a ratio that leaves the engine rumbling at 1,200 rpm and short of boost to get moving again. No such problems at higher speeds; it pootles happily along with torque on tap to go faster when required.
Finally, for now, the Audio 20 unit is better than I expected. Not as satisfying as the Volvo HU803 that is my benchmark for factory-fit audio but certainly pleasant and musical. I've written elsewhere about the Alpine Ezi-DAB I added last month, and I'll update that now I've had time to get used to it, but I'm pleased with the combination and the way it presents the music.
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