Post by Martin on Jan 14, 2018 13:30:59 GMT
I've had a few different Hire Cars over the last couple of months, none of which is deserving of its own thread, so I'll summarise them here.
Toyota C-HR
Strange looking thing, but it was full of tech and I was interested to try something with a small petrol turbo.
It had lane assist, which was annoying on a country road, so I turned it off pretty much straight away. Voodoo cruise was something that I was really interested in trying. I suspected I wouldn't like it and I'm sure it would work better on an Auto (as does std cruise), but I'm still not sure. I was expecting it to close down the car in front and then brake, rather than easing off as you would do normally, which is did at first and it wasn't good. However, I reduced the gap to the minimum, which was still way off Audi driver close and then it worked much better, presumably because it picked up the car in front well before it hit the limit. The only time it nearly put me through the windscreen was when I was getting boxed in, moved into the middle lane when I was closer to the car in front than it liked. The latest systems have 'Traffic Queue Assist', which I think would make it more worthwhile, otherwise I wouldn't bother.
Handling wise it was too soft and rolled about too much for my liking. I was comfortable enough around the City though, but not a car you'd enjoy driving.
The engine. I'm not a fan of small diesels and keep reading that small petrol turbos are much better. Not this one. It's a 1.2 and just didn't have enough oomph to move the car along at a decent pace, changing down on slight motorway inclines is not good and you had to rev it just to make reasonable progress which wasn't pleasant on the ears.
Not an attractive car....
Quite the tablet stuck on the dash....
Nissan Almera
Not much to say about it other than it was pretty awful. Baggy controls, very basic levels of equipment, poor quality interior, dull, noisy/unresponsive diesel engine etc etc. The basic Golf with 100k km on the clock I had a few months back wasn't brilliant, but better in every way than the Nissan.
VW Jetta
Last weeks offering from Sixt. It was a 2017 model, in a very basic spec with the 1.6 diesel. Not a bad car actually, despite it being basic (wheel trims?!), I really missed climate control, heated seats and auto wipers (it was cold and wet) and the seats were very flat, a slightly better spec car would have been much nicer to spend time in. It rode well, was fairly quiet on the motorway and everything was screwed together nicely. It didn't have Sat Nav, but I used Android Auto (so much better than Apple CarPlay) for the Sat Nav and it had a decent stereo, better than the basic systems BMW give you. The diesel engine was OK, but it's well worth moving up to the 2.0TDI which I had in a Golf and A3. Not much else to say, it was nice enough for a hire car.
It did 65mpg, which is very good.
Toyota C-HR
Strange looking thing, but it was full of tech and I was interested to try something with a small petrol turbo.
It had lane assist, which was annoying on a country road, so I turned it off pretty much straight away. Voodoo cruise was something that I was really interested in trying. I suspected I wouldn't like it and I'm sure it would work better on an Auto (as does std cruise), but I'm still not sure. I was expecting it to close down the car in front and then brake, rather than easing off as you would do normally, which is did at first and it wasn't good. However, I reduced the gap to the minimum, which was still way off Audi driver close and then it worked much better, presumably because it picked up the car in front well before it hit the limit. The only time it nearly put me through the windscreen was when I was getting boxed in, moved into the middle lane when I was closer to the car in front than it liked. The latest systems have 'Traffic Queue Assist', which I think would make it more worthwhile, otherwise I wouldn't bother.
Handling wise it was too soft and rolled about too much for my liking. I was comfortable enough around the City though, but not a car you'd enjoy driving.
The engine. I'm not a fan of small diesels and keep reading that small petrol turbos are much better. Not this one. It's a 1.2 and just didn't have enough oomph to move the car along at a decent pace, changing down on slight motorway inclines is not good and you had to rev it just to make reasonable progress which wasn't pleasant on the ears.
Not an attractive car....
Quite the tablet stuck on the dash....
Nissan Almera
Not much to say about it other than it was pretty awful. Baggy controls, very basic levels of equipment, poor quality interior, dull, noisy/unresponsive diesel engine etc etc. The basic Golf with 100k km on the clock I had a few months back wasn't brilliant, but better in every way than the Nissan.
VW Jetta
Last weeks offering from Sixt. It was a 2017 model, in a very basic spec with the 1.6 diesel. Not a bad car actually, despite it being basic (wheel trims?!), I really missed climate control, heated seats and auto wipers (it was cold and wet) and the seats were very flat, a slightly better spec car would have been much nicer to spend time in. It rode well, was fairly quiet on the motorway and everything was screwed together nicely. It didn't have Sat Nav, but I used Android Auto (so much better than Apple CarPlay) for the Sat Nav and it had a decent stereo, better than the basic systems BMW give you. The diesel engine was OK, but it's well worth moving up to the 2.0TDI which I had in a Golf and A3. Not much else to say, it was nice enough for a hire car.
It did 65mpg, which is very good.
