S-Max Mini Review

Can I say "whoosh"? :-)

If it was an everyday journey, I'd probably get a car with aircon for it...

Health and safety reasons should also be fine, after all changing gear yourself distracts one from the telephone call in progress or the remains of your lunch.

I find changing gear can get a bit messy if I've got more than one alcoholic drink open at the time.

No-one likes it to be known they 'can't hold their drink'.

Ah yea, but you have a Turbo Diesel car - people say you never need to change gear in a modern TD (I found that in fact the opposite was true but, meh :-) ) so just pop it in 5th/6th and leave it there. Then, bluetooth head set on (the more lights and silver bits the better) and I bet you can read the newspaper which is propped against the steering wheel, and eat your Ginsters [1], sort out your businesss/domestic call and still not have to put your beer down.

[1] Oh Ginsters - haven't had one of them for aaaaaaages. I'm so getting my mate to pick me one up on his way here...

I've been trying that hypothesis out more and more lately. I've found mine will pull reasonably well from 30 in 5th.

Yeah, but for relative values of "well", so will my 1.1 litre 106.

(c:

Somewhat irritatingly, the ZT-T 260 needed dropping into 4th to pull well at 30... but it pulled very well if you did that.

It would pull at 30 in 5th, but didn't have the diesel habit of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, turbo nothing, bit more, bit more, lot more, nothing.

The MG was more nothing, something, quite a bit, lots, lots more, change gear.

I suspect interstellar gearing was the main culprit. 3rd gear was absolutely superb though, 30 to 100 in 3rd, repeatedly, was a proper giggle.

My 328i is like that. To use the power in anything higher than third means getting way illegal.

Apparently the M3 diff gives more sensible ratios... anybody got one cluttering up the garage? I'll take it away free?

Things were getting that way for me in the Fabia. I had to buy my mongbox, but someone at work has a DSG Golf on medical grounds.

Well, I've just placed a Prius order and had it authorised by my boss.

I'll have to wait to see if the lease company are allowed to order it.

I've found no biscuits in the house, and going out on the bike 3 times a week for an hour or so to make for pretty painless weightloss. Only other concessions to diet food were looking on the sides of jars and not buying the stuff that's stupidly fatty (ie, thai curries are generally about 2-3% fat, some indian curries are < 10% fat, a lot of indian curries are 15% fat)...

The other thing to look out for is sauces in pubs and fast food type places (I include stuff like Franky and Benny's in fast food). A lot of stuff like the BBQ sauce you get with ribs and chicken wings etc. consists of mainly fat, vinegar and sugar, to give it a massive unrefridgerated shelf life.

Not having biscuits in the house doesn't sound painless to me. Just buy a crapper bike - you'll have to pedal harder, so you'll work off the biscuits you bought with the extra cash :-)

I thought they were standard issue for Managers in the field at your new place, not a special order thing.

They made some people redundant before Christmas, so have a handful of Focus pool cars kicking around doing nothing at the moment. Which could be a bit of an issue - although the fleet manager reckons he can find homes for them if I really want a Pious.

Let us get this straight... You're choosing a Prius?

It's either keep this and pay HFM?! in company car tax, or get the Pious and pay next to f*ck all in company car tax.

Given that they're both pretty hateful cars, I think I'll go with the one that has a spackerbox, more toys, and a tax bill around 30% of the other.