Post by rodge on Jun 22, 2018 6:10:01 GMT
Rented one of these on Tuesday as I was travelling sans famille, and I had about 240 miles of city and open road driving to do.
It all started off on a slightly sour note as I waited for half an hour to get the car I’d reserved at Budget. They are usually pretty good in SFO airport but this time, they were understaffed and over customered.
When I finally got to the counter, it took 2 minutes to process my reservation and I was on my way to the car.
The car was black and was 11 miles short of 12,000 so was nicely broken in.
I decided against putting the roof down, mainly because once I got in the car, I remembered the lack of space they had when I last rented a convertible Mustang about 15 years ago. My luggage fitted in the boot, on the back seat and in the passenger footwell.
It had leather seats and a leather dash. The car was well specced and I had no trouble getting comfortable. I drove off and it was quite quick. It all went well for about 15 minutes until I hit traffic, and did 1.6 miles in 30 minutes.
The delays in the airport totally negated my early arrival and meant I couldn’t beat the afternoon traffic.
So it wasn’t much of a fun car for a while. This meant that I got to mess around with the settings in the car and find out a bit about it.
Turns out there are multiple engine modes- so I switched it from normal to sport. Immediately the engine had a different tone and sounded like a rally car, growling every time I accelerated.
Once I left the traffic- about 2 hrs after getting in the car- I tested its performance. It accelerated briskly and is the first car I’ve been driving that dropped into 8th gear to accelerate, and pulled well in that gear.
I used the flappy paddle shifts and they were useful under harder driving.
It’s 10 speed gearbox did seem to be overkill, as it often jumped between gears and accelerated hard by going 1-3-5-6-7-8-9-10 and skipping gears.
Handling was good, tested on a twisty road on Wednesday and enjoyed a lot.
The roof is quick to remove and replace, is electric and works by unlocking a latch in the centre- the older cars I drove before had 2 levers in either side.
It averaged almost 25mpg which impressed me for an American muscle car, even if it’s the weenie version.
It was a fun car to drive but I’d never buy one. I did like the engine and would like to try it in another model, but I’ve always had a soft spot for a four pot turbo and for fast Fords.
And yes, I did do a burnout in it before I returned it. It’s be wrong not to...
It all started off on a slightly sour note as I waited for half an hour to get the car I’d reserved at Budget. They are usually pretty good in SFO airport but this time, they were understaffed and over customered.
When I finally got to the counter, it took 2 minutes to process my reservation and I was on my way to the car.
The car was black and was 11 miles short of 12,000 so was nicely broken in.
I decided against putting the roof down, mainly because once I got in the car, I remembered the lack of space they had when I last rented a convertible Mustang about 15 years ago. My luggage fitted in the boot, on the back seat and in the passenger footwell.
It had leather seats and a leather dash. The car was well specced and I had no trouble getting comfortable. I drove off and it was quite quick. It all went well for about 15 minutes until I hit traffic, and did 1.6 miles in 30 minutes.
The delays in the airport totally negated my early arrival and meant I couldn’t beat the afternoon traffic.
So it wasn’t much of a fun car for a while. This meant that I got to mess around with the settings in the car and find out a bit about it.
Turns out there are multiple engine modes- so I switched it from normal to sport. Immediately the engine had a different tone and sounded like a rally car, growling every time I accelerated.
Once I left the traffic- about 2 hrs after getting in the car- I tested its performance. It accelerated briskly and is the first car I’ve been driving that dropped into 8th gear to accelerate, and pulled well in that gear.
I used the flappy paddle shifts and they were useful under harder driving.
It’s 10 speed gearbox did seem to be overkill, as it often jumped between gears and accelerated hard by going 1-3-5-6-7-8-9-10 and skipping gears.
Handling was good, tested on a twisty road on Wednesday and enjoyed a lot.
The roof is quick to remove and replace, is electric and works by unlocking a latch in the centre- the older cars I drove before had 2 levers in either side.
It averaged almost 25mpg which impressed me for an American muscle car, even if it’s the weenie version.
It was a fun car to drive but I’d never buy one. I did like the engine and would like to try it in another model, but I’ve always had a soft spot for a four pot turbo and for fast Fords.
And yes, I did do a burnout in it before I returned it. It’s be wrong not to...
