Just one week to go till we collect our Easy TA and still racked with doubt with regard to if we have made the right decision in choosing the TA over the 1.2. Well time will tell.

Geoff.

The TA will be brilliant, I am sure - just don't get hung up about MPG. Driving should be fun yet efficient - exactly what the TA offers. A few of the car mags have been running TA's in the 500 and sure, they don't report 65mpg averages - more like 40mpg day-to-day. But 40 day-to-day with TA character beats 50 from a more mundane engine all the way in my book.

More to the point, assuming a broad average expectation for small-car annual mileage of 9000, the cost difference between the 2 would be about 77p/day - who wouldn't pay the price of a Mars Bar for that much fun every day eh?!

Enjoy it!

I am sure Panda is great little car with twinair. Is faster then 1.2, and economy should be the same. So dont worry. Just enjoy your car when you get it.

As Michael Winner might say - "Calm down dear, it's just an engine"

No need to worry about it at all though, I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun and to be honest your economy figures probably won't be a million miles away from average real world ones in the 1.2.

I love our 1.2 engine as it is a great mix of versatility and fun. But that's not to say I wouldn't have fancied getting a TwinAir version instead (in the end the sums didn't add up for me personally as the extra purchase cost + increased insurance price just weren't worth it).

Anyway, you've bought it now so you may as well look forward to it, haha!

Well it's going to be a lot quicker than a 1.2, and a lot more fun with the turbo kicking in but the MPG isn't anything to write home about from what I've heard.

If you're an eco driver you might be disappointed but otherwise you've made the right choice I'd say.

I drive a 500 TA. Great little motor!
It pops along when you want it, and can be economical too when you want it.

I broke my personal best the other day on my commute home, 71mpg over 14 miles.
If you go to the honest John web site and look at the 'real mpg' section, real end user entered data gives a very good indication of actual mpg's people are averaging. On the 500, the 1.2 and TA are nigh on the same around 49 mpg.

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't much 2012 panda recordings in there at the moment, but I'm sure the panda wouldn't be too far off 500 figures??

You will not recover the extra you paid for the TA over the 1.2 in fuel bills, but you will have more fun I reckon driving it and you will get more when you sell it eventually.



Oh, and forgot to say, in case you didn't know already, the car will feel very tight, it wont like low revs, and your mpg will be a lot lower when brand new. I'm near 4k miles now and the Mpg is still climbing, and the motor is losening up nicely.
You've made a good choice, enjoy when it gets here!

macamxthe1st said:

Just one week to go till we collect our Easy TA...

Click to expand...

I am extremely envious!

Ours might not arrive until November...

PS: You will love it, I promise...!

Thanks for the feedback folks, I will post brief notes to let you know how it goes.

Geoff.

You made a very good choice with the TA, in my opinion. I've had mine now for four months now and I can honestly say it is an outstanding engine for small car. As has been mentioned already, it can be very economical when you want it to be. The car I had before my TA Panda was a Mini Cooper 1.6 (I think it kicked out about 110hp or thereabouts). The TA Panda is as quick, if not quicker, off the mark than the Cooper.

Believe me... you will not be disappointed in your decision!! As deeyup has mentioned, it will feel tight to begin with, and fuel economy will not be great because of this. But it soon settles down. Mine has 2900 on the clock now, and MPG is still improving.

Enjoy it when you get it!!

My TA Panda arrived on Thursday, and so far I've been immensely happy with it. Only bugbears are that I'm finding it tricky to find a perfect seating position (if I'm sat low and far enough back for my legs to feel perfect, my arms are a little too far away from the wheel; seat higher makes the legs and arms okay, but then I can't see the top-left of the speedo).

The engine itself is wonderful though and after only 250-ish miles so far it's already getting better and better. The shift indicator light and I are having some disagreements, but that'll wear off as I get used to the fact that the Panda is my Sensible Car and that I need to keep the right-foot fun for the MX-5 at weekends.

The shift indicators are a bit odd aren't they? Mine wants me to go into 5th going up hill at just under 30mph when it's just about coping in 4th

Those shift indicators seem to me to not be changed from the 4cyl models.

Ignore them

Those pre delivery car blues, we all get them. The TA air engine is great the best of both worlds as far as I can see... Not that I've tried one tried to keep my car as cheap as poss. with a few tweaks. (need a new hearing aid and needed the difference to keep me hearing)

millns84 said:

The shift indicators are a bit odd aren't they? Mine wants me to go into 5th going up hill at just under 30mph when it's just about coping in 4th

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Yep, don't even bother worrying about the shift indicators. They are utterly useless in both the TwinAir and 1.2 by the sounds of it! Your experience is exactly the same as ours - if I tried shifting up to 5th when it says to do so I'd kill the engine!

Thankfully after 4 months of ownership I don't actually notice the indicators anymore

The civic I have have shift indicators, in that your heading towards redline to change.

I wonder if there is a "Soft" switch that will allow the dealer to turn the change light off.

Geoff.

macamxthe1st said:

I wonder if there is a "Soft" switch that will allow the dealer to turn the change light off.

Geoff.

Click to expand...

I fear you may not be in luck with that, but nevertheless worth asking the question.

If the answer is yes I'd happily take our car back to the dealer to get it switched off!

millns84 said:

The shift indicators are a bit odd aren't they? Mine wants me to go into 5th going up hill at just under 30mph when it's just about coping in 4th

Click to expand...

I would guess shift indicators are pretty dumb and not taking engine load into account.
They just always use same rev ranges, heavily biased toward under-rev to give you better economy at the price of reducing your acceleration to one of the train

they do take load into account. if you crawl along in 5th for example at 1500 revs on a flat road it's fine, but put your foot down and it will say change down.

They just say change up too soon most of the time.

Shift indicators are all part of the theatre of CO2 output and MPG anxiety from which manufacturers suffer now - they are put there to highlight theoretically the most economic way to travel from A-to-B. It may not be best for engine response, control, ability to take evasive action, or even feel right, but on a flat piece of smooth road, it will be most fuel efficient in absolute terms. Fitment of shift lights will undoubtedly be to help push (theoretical) total manufacturer CO2's output down to the required 120g/km limit, whenever it becomes EU law.

My Audi has it too (although it can be switched off in the Car Setup menu's) and of course they are not set for the typical drivers on typical roads, but they are very easy to ignore of course!

They're a fact of driving life now I fear, so just ignore them I say...