Technical Bite me

[AB100]

Just has a week (and 800 miles) in Spain in a Mk3 1.2 Panda hire car. It had 50000km and was somewhat battered but it drove well despite near-slick front tyres.


I've now come to realise that when you pay for 'supercover' the rental company takes this as "this person will thrash and crash the car so give them the most tired car in stock".


Anyhoo, getting back home and into our own 2011 1.2 Dynamic, the most obvious comparison was the higher biting point on our 7000 mile example. I'm guessing that as it's hydraulic there's no pedal adjustments available.


Other than that, I did notice that the Euro5 hire car suffered from the same irritating occasional jerkiness when slow manoeuvring. Badly designed software I expect.

 

[varesecrazy]

lucky you..

having selected a company that listed lots of FIAT's we got..

an Opel Meriva :shakehead:- Diesel

so bad I had to do all the driving

 

[AB100]

lucky you..

having selected a company that listed lots of FIAT's we got..

an Opel Meriva :shakehead:- Diesel

so bad I had to do all the driving

Yeah - I was happy with the slightly tatty Panda. Great fun indeed. The vomit-masking perfume they applied was a little heady, though it did mask the vomit, though not the visual evidence of it.


A Meriva diesel must be like uprooting a Victorian pub and driving it slowly through an oversized pair-of Rod Stewart's 1978-vintage mincing buttocks.

 

[Shires]

Was the brake feel any different on the LHD car? I have wondered if the linkage affects things on the RHD cars.

 

[AB100]

Was the brake feel any different on the LHD car? I have wondered if the linkage affects things on the RHD cars.

Oddly no. There's more difference between our 2011 100hp and 2011 Dynamic on brake feel and steering (the Dynamic brakes feeling a bit more assisted and the steering less-assisted at standard setting).

 

[daveofkent]

Oddly no. There's more difference between our 2011 100hp and 2011 Dynamic on brake feel and steering (the Dynamic brakes feeling a bit more assisted and the steering less-assisted at standard setting).

I owned a rhd panda for 4 years and now a LHD panda for 2 years.

When I changed I noticed the clutch felt different too. That was the only difference I remember, still not used to l/100km instead of mpg.

 

[AB100]

I owned a rhd panda for 4 years and now a LHD panda for 2 years.

When I changed I noticed the clutch felt different too. That was the only difference I remember, still not used to l/100km instead of mpg.

Always swap the figures over when I get a hire car! We averaged (on computer) 46mpg, which was fair considering their empty motorways and.......y'know.


Centauro fill your car up and charge you for the fuel. Quite how they got £65 worth of petrol in a Panda at £1 a litre (Euro 1.25) I do not know......

 

[Matt100HP]

Centauro fill your car up and charge you for the fuel. Quite how they got £65 worth of petrol in a Panda at £1 a litre (Euro 1.25) I do not know......

Impressive... I think the Pandas tank is 35 litres, maybe 40 if you include pipework, the filler neck etc, so fitting £65 of fuel in at ~£1 per litre is quite the achievement.

I think I'd have had something to say about it...

 

[daveofkent]

How did you do it? I have been driving like that for 2 years. I could never work out how to get mpg. I looked in the handbook but it just listed metric measurements.

You're lucky you got an old panda. I rented a new Skoda citigo and when I came back to the panda it felt broken!

 

[jrkitching]

Anyhoo, getting back home and into our own 2011 1.2 Dynamic, the most obvious comparison was the higher biting point on our 7000 mile example. I'm guessing that as it's hydraulic there's no pedal adjustments available.

I owned a rhd panda for 4 years and now a LHD panda for 2 years.

When I changed I noticed the clutch felt different too. That was the only difference I remember, still not used to l/100km instead of mpg.

AFAIK LHD cars have a cable operated clutch, so no surprise if it feels completely different.

 

[Wee Smurf]

Centauro fill your car up and charge you for the fuel. Quite how they got £65 worth of petrol in a Panda at £1 a litre (Euro 1.25) I do not know......

The most I've ever fitted into my Panda has been 33 litres and the needle was almost flat on the marker at that stage!

Think of a number, double it...

 

[AB100]

The most I've ever fitted into my Panda has been 33 litres and the needle was almost flat on the marker at that stage!

Think of a number, double it...

It's all part of the service I guess. We drove 800 miles in the week and the car was fine. If it had rained.........with those front tyres I doubt I'd still be alive.


I do find the 1.2 engine a quiet little thing (compared to the 1.4) but I do wonder what's the easiest/most effective way to reduce road noise. Probably floor liner

 

[Wee Smurf]

It's all part of the service I guess. We drove 800 miles in the week and the car was fine. If it had rained.........with those front tyres I doubt I'd still be alive.

Indeed we told the hire company that we'd be doing a lot of miles on a trip. It was Norway and around 2k miles for the round trip. We ended up with a Ford Focus which was on its last legs (including bald tyres). We almost rejected it at the port but we were told it was the only car available. I remember seeing one of the ski jumps and laughing about how good it would be to drive it off it. It must have heard as it broke down on the way out of that town. We were towed to the nearest Ford garage which also hired out cars. They impounded it and said it wasn't roadworthy. Unfortunately the only car they had was an Aygo. That was a squeeze with 3 weeks of luggage!