I'll never live this down....

I use the latter, and it works. Still prefer climate control over having to have the windows open to get cool, though!

Richard

Indeed - a sierra would be better.

Great - inverse snobbery on a budget...

No, it wouldn't. The long cruise and the crawl through town would still be economical, only the moments of madness would dent it, and it's still gonna develop 195bhp using 60-75% of the fuel a petrol car would.

Erm, no..... the reason why I'm burning petrol so quickly is because there's no long cruise or crawl through town. There's very little traffice where I live or work, and most of the journey is manic blats between roundabouts. That goes a long way to explaining my shocking fuel economy.

Not really, IIRC virtually all late spec 405s have AC, and it's pretty effective AC as well.

Reminds me, need to get the AC recharged in the Rangey, it's cold, but not that cold...

Drive slower?

How would you know about that?

Well, at least they don't roll over when faced with anything larger than a small furry mammal.

points.

strada boy

Drive better?

The car named after the drug group you need to be on to like ;)

I thought Diesels were no better for short twatting arround journeys?

Nah, that's where they excel. Especially (particularly when compared to petrols) on short journeys where the engine hasn't had a proper chance to warm up. They're operating at something like 80-90% of their peak efficiency when cold*, compared to petrols which are at about 50-60% of their peak efficiency when cold**.

The fuel economy difference between comparable petrol/diesel engines when they're only used for long gentle runs isn't nearly as much, but it's still a fair bit, but town running (especially with the engine on and off) really kills any petrol's economy, and doesn't have nearly so much an effect with diesels.

Or something.

• - source: complete guesswork

• - source: complete guesswork

Heh. There's a huge choice of 3 nationwide under 2 grand on Autotrader (if you can stretch to two and a half there are 3 S70 diesels too).

The Mk2 interiors are very nice, and solid with it - worlds better than a Marea anyway :-) Also, the better spec ones have aircon.

Mine was an estate, and it was in pretty good nick for its age. There were quite a few about for ~£500 at the time, but yes, saloons are much cheaper, and are lighter, therefore quicker and handle better.

The interior quality was substantially improved on the post-facelift models - the one I had was rattle free after 9 years and 150k miles. All except the absolute poverty-spec models came with aircon, although I don't think climate was an option.

Doesn't sound like you are sold on the idea, so I'll shut up now.

->> Happy memories, apart from the rust that is.....

->

->Fair play, I loved my Strada Abarth 130TC, and I'd have another one!

I had one for a couple of weeks, tho I would have prefered a Supermirafiori Sport.