It's with a lot of sadness this week that I parted with my Mercedes Benz CLK63 AMG. We had a blast the past eighteen months, but time had come for me to say good bye to it and take the reigns of, what to my mind is a 'sensible' car. Ugh. Sensible. Makes me feel suddenly very old. If it wasn't for the fact that my other car is in dire need of surgery, for which I am still waiting on quotes for - mostly just dotting i's and crossing t's - in replacing the gearbox, I would be driving it.
As it stands I took delivery on Monday of my new BMW 320d. Mineral white with black leather interior. With the minimum additions from the optional extras list, I thought that adjusting to it would represent a hardship. Driving away from the showroom on Monday, the first angst beset me in adjusting to the cars totally different power and response curves, and a very new and unsettling auto stop start function. None of my other cars had this `feature`. Yes, I'm quoting that, since at the time, I did not consider a car that switches itself off in the middle of traffic, when you have come to a stop, a feature. But,.... it has grown on me. Especially when I started adding up the distance travelled and the distance the trip computer indicated was still left in the tank.
Coming as I was, from a 6.3 liter V8, which turned everything into the most fun daring race, the fuel efficiency was a novelty. In the Benz I had to fill up on Monday and again on Thursday evening, since the best I could muster was a 450km on the tank, since you had to leave quite a margin for the guzzling of fuel, those 8-cylinders did in peak time traffic. The two lines on the fuel gage, that are visible when the reserved fuel light comes on, disappears in a flash and, yes, I have been left by the side of the road, having run out of fuel.
Now it's more a matter of having done the whole week to work and back, ~110km round trip per day, on half a tank of fuel. With a good prospect of doing 900-1000km on the tank in this little 3-series.
It took three days for me to start fiddling with buttons in the car. The first, was the discovery of the Jekkel-and-Hyde personality of my car, hidden under innocuous, Sport-Eco-Proc toggle to the right of the gear shift. Press once, and the car configures for `Comfort`. Quite a snappy setting in and off itself with still the ever present eco-pro auto stop start feature. Then, on the second use of this little toggle switch comes the real surprise. The gearbox is not flying through the first four gears, instead making use of each RPM of the engine to 2,000 rpm's to get the most speed and response out of each of those gears. This 3-series is no slouch. It is going to get taking used to having the conservative car in one setting, but the totally fun sport version in the other.
I can't wait to see what the next couple of months bring, me and the 3.
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