Hello everyone, I just returned home from a 3300 km round trip vacation through the Canadian Rocky Mountains and wanted to share my experiences.. First and foremost, the car did the trip without a single hiccup, and although I have posted on here having trouble getting comfortable in the seat, I did manage to sit in it for 12 hours without getting terribly fatigued. The car corners through the tight mountain turns easily 20-30 km/h faster than posted speed limit, and I averaged 36.68 IMPERIAL mpg or 7.7 Liters per 100 km round trip. This is including 5 days of city driving and a lot of long hill climbs through the mountains. A also achieved a single tank best of 39.8 IMP mpg or 7.2 Liters per 100 Km which was at a point where the average speed was between 80-100 kph. Now for the stuff I didn't like.. The transmission is absolutely amazing when shifted manually through these conditions, but left in auto mode, the car has a tendency to overshift for the hills. For example, It would downshift from 6th to 4th and take the rpm up to over 4000 to climb a hill that I managed to easily climb in manual mode in 5th. I spent most of the trip through the mountains manually shifting because of this.. which I actually enjoyed more anyway. And this leads me to my next complaint. When navigating around hilly city streets, the vehicles desire to give the best fuel economy puts it into a higher gear way too often and you have to basically floor the accelerator and have it lurch into 1st gear and proceed to climb the hill hill. In my opinion, again manual mode must be used to navigate around, which then makes the car a pleasure to use under these circumstances. And lastly, the open grille design is horrible for bugs becoming plastered onto the radiator.. in a matter of maybe a year or so I can see the radiator becoming completely plugged with bugs if we don't find some kind of a shield. Overall, I love the car, but like everything in life.. it has some quirks that will take some getting used to.
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