Archive for the ‘Vehicle Road Test Reports’ Category
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Finally it has arrived after what some have said has been unnecessary delays, so how does it fair within its market well the first plus around £5k less that Volkswagen or Audi and second is the joy of the noise there is no doubt time and effort has gone into producing a lovely rasp when the freedom of the country road beckons, but it keep nice and quiet on the typical town ride so as not to be a nuisance.
On the down side is the ride harsh and you will feel every bump but still much improved on the models that have gone before and reports have stated that there has been no more feeling of bouncing out of control.
Overall the handling is fair the sound is great and price brilliant.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
You have to hand it to Kia it is a fine looking vehicle very handsome managing elegance with a good chunky look and the inside is also very pleasing with good space for both the passengers and luggage, models apart from the entry come with 7 good seat but the lack of leg room makes the two that fold into the floor ideal for children only.
On the power side the 2.2 litre diesel engine has replace the old 2.5 and is available on all but the entry model and provides better fuel economy at 42.2mpg and output comes in at 194 bhp, which the vehicle handles with ease.
At the top of the ranch is the KX-3 which comes with 18″ wheels, leather upholstery xenon headlights and an electric sunroof the top price reaching 30k.
Overall the Sorento offer a good looking car with a pleasant smooth ride at a price that is pleasing.
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Vauxhall are providing an extremely economical not to mention family practical car, this is the first time that Vauxhall has offered a four wheel passenger car with a diesel engine, the Insignia Tourer is the estate version of the Vauxhall’s saloon so provides the important big boot and and a roomy interior.
The obvious market would be for the caravan or boat towing drive with the 2.0 litre CDTi engine provides the required power with the fuel return of 47.1 mpg.
You could have a game of spot the difference with this model and the original as changes are few with a small badge at the rear, and a new trim level called Vx Line that will come on the SRi model, which also comes with 19″ Alloy wheels and a leather steering wheel, there will also be a leather option coming in light brown called Indian Summer.
The Vauxhall Insignia is a firm favourite with the company car drivers it will be interesting to see how sales of the Tourer go once prices are announced.
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Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
The BMW 3 series range has a slight face lift including new bumpers and lights which have been added to coupe and cabriolet, but the 320d also gets a new engine a 1800 bar common rail injection system and an extra 7bhp thus totalling 182bhp and an extra 22lb ft of torque taking it up to a maximum of 280lb ft.
The standard 320d has also been given the full compliment of fuel-saving Efficient Dynamics kit which includes the ability to selectively switch off the electric power steering , oil pump and air-con compressor. Start /Stop is also standard. 320d standard comes in at C02 of 125/km
The 320d ED however has a de=tuned version of the 320d engine with power reduced by 20bhp. Added to this is a package of additional engineering measures including a longer final drive ratio lowered suspension front and rear new aerodynamic wheel rims. 320d ED C02 comes in at 109/km
In a test drive it was found that although well balanced and fast, the new engine was slightly more nosier than its competitors. Whilst the ED model came in with a smoother drive.
It could be said the 3 series control weights are a little heavy, however this series is a rear drive and has nearly perfect 50-50 weight distribution which gives the car a great handling advantage over its front wheel rivals.
Overall the 320d preformed well, just a slight instability in strong side winds.
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
So the all new Sorento is nearly with us and the top end is hitting the 30k mark, although the entry level is starting at £20495 with the diesel edition coming in at £2000 more, the Kia is competitive within its market, but they still have the on going problem of getting people to try, by all accounts once tried then conversion is swift it is simply that first step over the threshold.
The new Sorrento has moved from the separate chassis to a monocoque, but the ground clearance has been lowered as to the towing capacity by a whole ton, which would suggest that their market has moved, but that is not to say that the new model is not tough.
Alan Kidd of Total Off Road, gave the Kia admiration at it ability to equip itself when the smooth runs out, although in general the drivers of the Kia will not be planning to drive it up and down mountains, the cabin space and interior design is all good and the Sorento V2.0 has the new 2.2 litre turbo diesel engine which while offering more power that the old 2.5 litre unit also has the added benefit of using less fuel.
Kia also do a 2.4 petrol engine this will be available on the 5 seats two wheel version only, overall the seating is comfortable in both the front and middle rows, the optional third row is low and it has to be said not much leg room, in terms of adults, you would not want to be carrying 7 adults and luggage.
It goes without saying that the entry level includes air con six speaker hi fi, the KX-2 has the addition of cruise control, heated front seats and reversing sensors, whilst at the top of the range KX-3 you have 18″ alloys cream leather upholstery, electric panoramic sunroof and xenon headlamps.
On the safety front there is the electronic brake force distribution, ESP and downhill brake control all standard. So too are active head restraints for those in the front six airbags with passenger’s side cut-off switch plus Isofix mounting points.
So all in all is this car worth the 30k price tag and it would seem so pleasing in every aspect from cabin design through to handling and with Kia 7 year warranty which can be transfered giving the potential for excellent residuals, it must surly be worth a look.
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Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The four wheel drive version of the Skoda has a large boot easily folded seats and with the sliding ability allows for great storage, they have also added in hooks for shopping.
The mpg of 35.3 isn’t great but on the economy drive it is capable of 47mpg so the driver can have a significent impact of the fuel consumption.
Overall the Yeti is a solid buy.
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Thursday, January 7th, 2010
From the stiched leather to the wood the attention to detail is beyond anything else in this price range and the people at Jaguar will tell you all about the crystal- tipped piezp and twin-turbo chargers which all add to making a more powerful engine than its predessor whilst all the while more efficent with less CO2 emittions.In face this new twin-turbo V6 engine delivers 275bhp a third more than the 2.7 V6 whist being ten per cent more efficent.
On the road the engine is just so smooth and glides through the six speed automatic gearbox as though gliding accross ice. The only minor hitch was the road holding on 19 inch wheels over poor surfaced roads.
The XF also has strong residual value prediction from CAP 29% after four years/80000 miles and while it can be said this is due to the cars all round appeal, the lack of sales in the comparative market plays it part, obviously it does not compete with the 5 Series, E Class and A6, however should Jaguar decide to fit a four cylinder diesel in the XF then no doubt this will be attractive to the fleet market.
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Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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| Road Test: by David Finlay (08 Dec 09) |
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It’s often said that there is no such thing as a bad car nowadays, and certainly the standard has been raised almost beyond belief since the early days of motoring. One of my favourite bad cars was the mesmerisingly awful Pennington, described by the historian St John C Nixon as being “in a class by itself as a mechanical outrage”. In 1899, H W Egerton agreed – to his later regret – to drive a Pennington from Manchester to London as a publicity stunt. On reaching Lichfield, he wrote to his mother that “at the present rate of progress, it would take me three weeks to reach London, but I realise of course that I cannot always expect to cover sixteen miles in nine hours”. Nor did he. The attempt was abandoned when Egerton ran out of his vast stock of spare parts, which included forty-eight spark plugs.
Fortunately, no car as horrific as the Pennington is in production now, but the standards of the industry these days are so high that is possible to build something vastly better which is nonetheless, if not exactly “bad”, at least a major disappointment. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Honda Insight.
There are some things I like about the Insight. For example, I like the way the engine eases into life when you turn the key. It’s as if one second the engine isn’t running, and the next second it is, with almost no apparent mechanical process in between. And I love the steering. You turn the wheel and the front end just melts into the corner. I don’t know of any other car – not one within about £40,000 of the Insight’s list price, anyway – which steers like this. And the actions of the accelerator and brake pedals are nearly as good.
But there is much about the Insight which makes me want to send Honda to stand in a corner until it has learned to behave. I’ve dealt with most of this in a previous road test of the entry-level SE, but in case you don’t have much time on your hands I’ll give you the short version here: it feels cheap and flimsy for a car costing over £17,000, the dashboard and the rest of the trim seem to have been designed for two entirely different cars, the ride quality and handling ability are poor, there’s a lot of road and wind noise, luggage space is a long way below the class average when the rear seats are folded down, there’s a puncture repair kit instead of a proper spare wheel, and the rear visibility is so utterly terrible that you’d almost think Honda wants you to knock people down or crash into things when you’re reversing.
The Insight falls into what motor industry people call the C segment – that’s the one with the Ford Focus in it – and I can not think of a less appealing car in that part of the market. However, the main selling point is that this is a hybrid, with an electric motor boosting the power of the 1.3-litre petrol engine. Honda bases its marketing of the car almost entirely on this aspect, and the Insight’s dashboard Will Not Shut Up about it (there are all sorts of graphics and changing background colours to tell you how economically, or otherwise, you’re driving), so it’s worth investigating how effective the system is.
With that in mind, I took the opportunity offered by a 1000-mile journey to see how much fuel the car would use. It would be unfair to go into much detail about the first part of that experiment, because the weather conditions were absolutely terrible and made economical driving impossible. It did, however, confirm that the economy readout on the trip computer is pretty accurate – my own figures were only 0.6mpg different, which is negligible.
Later on I managed a long motorway run in much better weather and managed around 56mpg, a figure which understandably dipped to 52mpg when I started driving in towns and on slow country roads. According to the EU test the combined consumption is 61.4mpg, but since it’s very difficult to match the official rating I’m not too concerned about that.
What is concerning is that I was actually trying quite hard not to use any more fuel than I needed to. I never accelerated particularly strongly (when you’ve done that once, the memory of the strangled cry the engine makes when you take it to maximum revs is a good incentive not to do so again) and I never came out of the car’s Eco mode.
Despite all that, I couldn’t beat the economy I managed earlier this year driving normally in a similarly priced, much quicker, non-start/stop turbo diesel C segment rival which is better than the Insight in almost every respect. So, whatever Hollywood stars and green activists may say about hybrids being the saviours of the planet, this particular example doesn’t seem to be making a very good job of it.
I have now driven two versions of the Insight, and I do not intend to be troubled by a third. Still, at least it can do sixteen miles in under nine hours. There’s always that to be said for it.
Price: £17,290
Capacity: 1339cc
Power: 101bhp
0-62mph: 12.5 seconds
Maximum speed: 113mph
Economy: 62.8mpg extra urban, 61.4mpg combined
CO2 emissions: 105g/km
Insurance: Group 6
Honda figures. |
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Friday, December 18th, 2009
The low slung look of Infinity’s EX37 crossover tells you that this is no ordinary 4×4. The traditional SUV template has been torn up, in favour of something with compact executive saloon manners and a premium cabin ambience to match.
First a little background: if the Infinity name doesn’t sound familiar, that’s because it’s new to Europe. Essentially the premium arm of Nissan – it’s like the relationship between Toyota and Lexus – the cars have been a mainstay of the American executive market for some time.
Although offering a small range now – compact saloon, coupe, convertible plus medium and large SUVs – you can expect it to grow over time. And it’s no coincidence that the current cars pretty much cover the traditional affordable executive sectors. Infinity means business, which includes developing a boutique-style dealership network to help promote the firm’s desire to position itself as an exclusive brand.
Just like the brand, the EX37 is not like other cars in its class. Its low slung nature is something of a giveaway to its performance intentions. Essentially it has been designed to behave more like an executive saloon than a traditional SUV – good news for anyone seeking less pitch and roll on the daily commute.
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Category: Luxury
P11D price: £55,625
Key rival: BMW 7-series
Mercedes
has revised its S-class range for 2010 with a few tweaks to the exterior including new day-running lights plus a
revised 3.0-litre diesel that now comes in below 200g/km for CO2.
The start-point for the S-class range is now badged S350 CDI BlueEfficiency and comes with a 37.2mpg official fuel figure and
will cost 110.7 pence a mile to run, according to KwikCarcost.
As with the pre-facelift car, the new S-class is one of the most stress-free motoring experiences you can buy, this side of a
chauffeur. If you option it, the car will even come to a complete stop in heavy traffic when using the clever cruise control.
The engine and technology tweaks keep the car ahead of the competition and the S-class is still our choice in this sector.
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