We won a prize!

Congrats to Dervman and Astravanman for not getting lost!

And the price is? A good 10 hours of sleep?

Keep us informed so that normal people can be happy for you and not so normal can rant the rest of the weekend. :-)

Tom - not certified to be normal but taking chances - De Moor

Oh, Pete, you wanted to know the consumption. Over the 535.7 miles we burnt

LMFAO was expecting a stat of some kind at some point on fuel consumption, could i have that in tea spoons though please :)

Well done guys!! When's the next one?

I could beat it in the golf...

I got 69mpg out the Passat today...

With the air con on, for most of it.

you probably wanted that in the more familiar units of teaspoons per yard. According to google

or, exactly 99 yards per teaspoon, a figure so precise it must be right...

OMFG if this is what happens I'm gonna cancel the A170 CDI order and drive my volvo until I'm bankrupt.

I got 34mpg on tuesday under threat of not being able to refuel and having

Dude, like, whatever. Try that in an equivalent emission standard Golf then.

Dunno! Need to figure out the clues...

I was asked for the data, but being suitable uncommunicative yesterday didn't have the data.

I worked it out pretty much bang on anyway (as Tim will confirm from the text he got from me!).

I knew it was roughly speaking 200 miles exactly to the first fillup point, for exactly 20 litres of fuel filled up, and then 335 (a shade under, 334.9 I think) for 36.33 litres. So I was about right, and did all that on a s**te old Nokia 3310, without any need for notebooks, palms and desktop PCs :-)

Dunno, but I'd be up for one finishing up at the same pub again.

Nice. Long run? Average speed?

Calm down, Derv, it's only a newsgroup :-)

Suppose you've got a point comparing things to things with current emissions standards. If you want to do that, you could compare it to RichardK's 1.6 Beetle, which he averages around 33mpg from (I think - PING RichardK).

Thing is, the Golf costs a lot less, is fairly unlikely to go wrong, handles better, goes quicker, on balance has better fuel economy, blah blah blah. But then the Ka's what you want, it's got a chain (so no belt changes/hassles/risks), fun to drive, full leather, air-con, ABS, etc etc. Anyway, can we not go there.....

But the Ka only has a chain due to it's ancient pushrod engine.

A Golf GTI cambelt costs less than a tenner and any half decent local garage would do an oil and filter change and a belt change for under 100 quid.

So the belt vs chain argument is out the window straight away.

In fact, the only thing I can see in favour of the Ka is the aircon, but that obliterates the already crap power output.....

Aye, maybe, but at the end of the day you're not comparing like with like.

One reason for people buying new (or nearly new) cars, as in Dervy's case, is that it's easier to find one specced exactly as you like, and it takes the gamble out of how well (or not so well) it's been driven and looked after, and it gives them the opportunity to treat it really well (with regards to servicing and driving) from day one (ok, not quite day one with a nearly new car), and minimise the chances of anything going wrong as a result.

So to get all that you'd have to get a new Golf GTI, which I'd say has significantly higher overall running costs than a Ka, especially in terms of depreciation and insurance.

Now personally I'd go for a Mk2 Golf GTI over a new Ka, as the risk on anything going majorly wrong is really limited to the cambelt, as most of the mechanicals are fairly bulletproof, and it's not *that* hard to find a well looked after one, but each to his own.

I'm calm! :)

How so? Does it matter why it has one just that is has one? That's like dismissing a rear wheel drive BMW because it can trace the lineage back to a

And the way it drives, the low insurance and the cheap servicing. Not to mention the rally-proven abilities too.