The end of the week show.

So, what fun things have been happening in my own, personal, reality show this weekend?

Well, it all started by waking up rather too early.. 2.5 hours too early at 5am on Saturday. I dozed and listened to Radio 4 (which is usually a good sleep enducer) and managed to get at least one hour more of almost sleep before getting up and having a shower.

John Hugill, the salesman from Oxford SAAB drove past my house at the appointed time but did turn around and come back in the end. Apparently he’d forgotten to take my details home with him. Still, it didn’t matter. We got to the dealership on time and after an hour of filling out forms I was on my way home again.

I dind’t spend long at home. I merely took enough time to programme the DVR to record “Time Team”, close the blinds and dump my bags into the boot.

I arrived at Rac & Grum’s place at about midday and was welcomed warmly by Grum. Rac was busy doing her homework and couldn’t come out to play until after lunch. ๐Ÿ˜‰ Meanwhile Chris was out hiking with the cubs.

I’m not sure where the rest of yesterday went other than helping Chris start to build the Lego Technics crane I’d bought him as a combination of a couple of Christmas and birthday presents and watching the first part of The Hogfather on the DVD I’d given Rac & Grum. It’s good that we all four had new toys to play with.

Today? Well, very similar to yesterday evening really. A most pleasant weekend. I left a bit earlier than usual as Rac & Grum both had homework to do whilst Chris was at cricket practise.

As for the new car. Well, the steering and suspension are hugely better than the old 9-3.. it goes around corners like on rails and doesn’t seem to lean at all. I’m also surprisingly glad that it came with the 5 speed gearbox.. that’s a lovely gearbox, you just want to keep changing gear. The 6 speed I tried was wooly by comparison. The one annoying thing I’ve found so far is that the sat-nav system is purely in kilometres, even though the rest of the car uses miles as a measurement. It’s not as if the device is of european manufacture or design as in the manual they accidently missed one occasion where they should have done a global replace of “Cadillac” with “SAAB.”

Oh, and I was quite pleased about its fuel consumption as well. Concidering that the engine hasn’t been run in yet I managed to get an average MPG of ~33mpg including standing in lots of traffic jams in Reading on the way to Rac & Grum’s place. That is the same sort of mpg my old 9-3 gets and it’s nicely run in. I guess it’s helped by the gearing, the engine is reving very low at 30mph in 3rd gear, so much so that you can’t really pull away quickly and have to change down to 2nd gear so that the revs go above 2000rpm to get into the main power band. 5th gear can only really usefully be used at 60mph and above.

1 thought on “The end of the week show.

  1. Re: Should have got a diesel ๐Ÿ™‚

    hehe.

    Well, the official figures for my car at 47mpg extra-urban, something like 29mpg urban and 36mpg average, which isn’t half bad for a 2.0 litre engined car. Admittedly it would need careful driving to get those figures and the engine will have to be worn in as well (i.e. a few thousand miles on the clock).

    If I was very careful, in my old car, on a long trip I could get above the official extra-urban figure. I think the best I got on a trip down to Cornwall was about 41mpg (and I believe the official figure was something like 38mpg).

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