Was told I was getting a Jaguar XE and then led into a service bay where there was a Project 8! Sadly, this was not the car I was to recieve, instead a XE R-dynamic, not 100% sure what engine but I think the P250 4-cyl turbo petrol. Looked extremely tidy in red.
Easy to drive and comfortable on a cruise. Soaks up lumps, bumps and potholes very well. In dynamic mode (not sure if this has adaptive dampers or not?) it flows well on an open, sweeping fast road but isn't really well suited to anything twisty, it's very grippy but it rolls too much.
Picks up well from slow speeds and the auto box shifts very quickly in sport mode but the engine lacks guts in the mid range and you have to work the box to keep it in the top end of the rev range to keep things interesting. Anodyne noise in general but it turns into a bit of a snarl at higher revs.
Mrs mik’s launch edition E-Tron had to go in for a new camera the other week (warranty). She got a different colour launch edit E-Tron demonstrator to use whilst it was being fixed (which turned out to be several days). Couldn’t complain about that.
Explosive Newt wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 11:50 am
Was told I was getting a Jaguar XE and then led into a service bay where there was a Project 8! Sadly, this was not the car I was to recieve, instead a XE R-dynamic, not 100% sure what engine but I think the P250 4-cyl turbo petrol. Looked extremely tidy in red.
Easy to drive and comfortable on a cruise. Soaks up lumps, bumps and potholes very well. In dynamic mode (not sure if this has adaptive dampers or not?) it flows well on an open, sweeping fast road but isn't really well suited to anything twisty, it's very grippy but it rolls too much.
Picks up well from slow speeds and the auto box shifts very quickly in sport mode but the engine lacks guts in the mid range and you have to work the box to keep it in the top end of the rev range to keep things interesting. Anodyne noise in general but it turns into a bit of a snarl at higher revs.
A mate of mine took his F-pace in for service on Saturday and was given the exact same courtesy car. Similar conclusions about the oomph.
M140i has gone in for a big service and I have been loaned a new 430i MSport in white. A very nice thing it is too. Quiet and comfy when it needs to waft and surprisingly quick when going for a back road blast. The auto in manual mode shifts so much faster than my car. It's a big improvement. It's a very nice thing to hustle down my local B roads.
Also the first car I've driven with HUD. For the first few miles I really disliked it but then I got used to it and it grew on me. Would I pay for it as an option, no.
All in all a really nice car. Parked up on my drive it does look quite large though. Happy to have had it to use today!!
McSwede wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:07 pm
The auto in manual mode shifts so much faster than my car.
Really? It's the same ZF box, isn't it? So must just be software or adaptations making yours lazy.
I'd imagine an updated version with better software but much more snappy through the gears in Manuel.
I took it out for another back road thrash before I returned it and have to say I really liked it. It was on 18's which probably helped the ride but it felt really stable when spanking it around roads I'd usually do in the M140i. More than enough poke when you got up it though.
My dad thought it was a diesel when I started it up
A few years ago BMW gave me a MINI as a courtesy when my 335i was in for work, and I managed to kerb three of the wheels in 24 hours which resulted in a wheel refurb bill, so I stick to my bicycle these days. The lottery isn't what car I'll get, it's what damage they'll get back
mik wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:42 pm
We’ve been waiting months now for @DeskJockey ’s in-depth review of the Dacia Sandeep.
A thousand apologies for my tardiness! It is an unforgivable oversight on my part and I shall vigorously chastise myself in the most verbose way.
As for the car, it sucked. Massively. Slow, noisy, full of cheap materials and scratchy plastics. Vague controls. Add to that the effects of having been a repair shop loaner, and you can probably imagine what an automotive delight it was.
Why anyone would buy a new one of those over a lightly used car from almost any other brand is beyond me. It is about the size of a Golf, so your £7k(ish) should give a number of options. But, if new is the most important requirement, I guess it has that going for it. Felt very early nineties Daewoo/Hyundai.
mik wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:42 pm
We’ve been waiting months now for @DeskJockey ’s in-depth review of the Dacia Sandeep.
A thousand apologies for my tardiness! It is an unforgivable oversight on my part and I shall vigorously chastise myself in the most verbose way.
As for the car, it sucked. Massively. Slow, noisy, full of cheap materials and scratchy plastics. Vague controls. Add to that the effects of having been a repair shop loaner, and you can probably imagine what an automotive delight it was.
Why anyone would buy a new one of those over a lightly used car from almost any other brand is beyond me. It is about the size of a Golf, so your £7k(ish) should give a number of options. But, if new is the most important requirement, I guess it has that going for it. Felt very early nineties Daewoo/Hyundai.
mik wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:42 pm
We’ve been waiting months now for @DeskJockey ’s in-depth review of the Dacia Sandeep.
A thousand apologies for my tardiness! It is an unforgivable oversight on my part and I shall vigorously chastise myself in the most verbose way.
As for the car, it sucked. Massively. Slow, noisy, full of cheap materials and scratchy plastics. Vague controls. Add to that the effects of having been a repair shop loaner, and you can probably imagine what an automotive delight it was.
Why anyone would buy a new one of those over a lightly used car from almost any other brand is beyond me. It is about the size of a Golf, so your £7k(ish) should give a number of options. But, if new is the most important requirement, I guess it has that going for it. Felt very early nineties Daewoo/Hyundai.
Ordered 'Focus, Astra, Megane', ended up with a Clio SW.
I normally try and use a local hire car company whenever I go abroad, rather than one of the big international rental places, as it usually works to get better service and cheaper prices with no silly add-ons. However, how anyone can think that a Clio SW (estate) is in the same class as a Focus/Astra etc is beyond me. Sure, the boot is a similar size but the interior is tiny in comparison.
Also...
It's shit.
Sorry, this isn't a 'my cars at home are better than this' rant, but rather the Clio is objectively a horrible little car. Want a list? Fine...
As soon as we sat in it we both commented on how uncomfortable the seats are. This is basic. Seats have been a key feature of 'cars' since Henry Ford bought a job lot of black paint from his local B&Q. How can a car manufacturer in 2021 get such a simple thing so badly wrong? They manage to simultaneously be too soft AND squeeze your sides too much at the same time. Which leads me onto the driving position...
...oh dear. It seems like someone in Renault's design office bought a 1990's Fiat Punto as a reference car and tried their best to copy its ergonomics. Basically, if you were lucky enough to both have been blessed with legs at birth AND have had them grow roughly in proportion to your body through to adulthood then you'd better be happy with your legs both bent uncomfortably (whilst having the seat forward enough to reach the other major controls) and also off to one side, as the pedals are offset.
Once you've got the drivers seat in the least uncomfortable position and started the engine then you pull away to discover the next two problems. Firstly, the engine sounds like a diesel. No, seriously. I've actually found myself checking the tachometer's redline a few times thinking that it must start at 4k as that's definitely a tractor engine under the bonnet. But no, it definitely says 'gasoline' in about 100 places throughout this hire car. But unlike a diesel there's no 'wall of torque' to push you along. You just accelerate and the only way you know you're moving faster is that the scenery passes by a little quicker. I'm not one of these fools who thinks a hire car should be driven like you stole it, but I do like to be able to keep up with local traffic and not be in anyone's way. Secondly, the ride. Being what I assume is a relatively base model, 'my' Clio is equipped with sidewalls so tall they would make a Range Rover blush. So how does it manage to have soft, roly poly suspension AND thump over the few bumps in southern Portugals relatively smooth roads so badly? It's as if it has no spring rate at all, but also the dampers from Hamiltons F1 car.
So, you've dragged and flogged your way to the hotel and it's time to park. What is this? A small car with practically no visibility? Seriously, I don't understand it. You can't see the corners of the car at all, the view out of the rear looks like it was designed by Royal Mail's letterbox division and the wing mirrors have been cut and shaped for either aero or aesthetic reasons, but not at all for 'seeing behind you' reasons'. How is a small car so hard to park?
Any redeeming features? Well, the boot space is good, but then it is an estate. And the radio has a built in phone holder in the middle of it, meaning we didn't need to get ours out of the luggage to use Google Maps to find our way around. The only problem is that as soon as you mount your phone in it you're blocking all the visibility of the buttons and screen on the radio. Oh well.
Small cars don't have to be like this. We had a blast in the Seat Ibiza we had in Menorca, and Kefalonia's Fiesta was an absolute hoot. And Renault have been making small cars since 1898. Over a century FFS and this is the best they can do?!
We've only been here a couple of days and already my son cries every time we get in the bloody thing. "He doesn't like being in this car" my wife said earlier. Well that makes three of us....
Racist!
