So, after an intensive summer, where we took the car for our annual Spain trip and more than 15000kms on the odometer I thought I'd give you an update.
The car performs wonderfully over long trips - in fact, I would argue that this is the car's main forte.
It is silent, even at autobahn speeds, the car is rock solid even at V-max, despite being fully loaded with luggage and what not.
Speaking of V-max, I recorded 252km/h on the GPS, while the speedo bottomed out at 260km/h. The speedos on both this and my M3 are incredibly accurate
Interestingly enough, according to the power displays, it only requires approximately 140bhp to sustain 252km/h on flat autobahn. The instantaneous fuel consumption is 12l/100 at V-max
A few niggles:
It was extremely hot this summer, everywhere in Europe. It was not unusual to have ambient temperatures of 38 degrees C on daily basis (100F). The tires would regularly reach 68-70 degrees C. The aircon had no problem keeping up with this, even with five people in the car.
The cooling function of the seats did not, however. Even if you set cooling at 3 bars the cooling breeze would be barely noticeable after a while. Funnily enough, if you just start the car after a few hours pause you can definitely feel (and hear) the fans buzzing and chill coming out of the seat - but after seating in the car for a few hours ( we did several 6+ hour stints) the cooling would not blow discernibly cold. I guess it's like the fans stop after a while, perhaps not to overheat?
Has anyone else experienced this as well? The car was updated in Sept, but it has not been warm enough to put this to the test.
Other than that, the car did not miss a beat. The brakes are very good and have no problem hauling down speed from 200+km/h on a regular basis, even though temperatures were high, the smart lane assist was great when we had stau and the B&W sound system really shone on longer trips. The car is comfortable, if not outright fun
The only thing is that the sound of the engine is anodyne. There really is no major difference between the modes. The car is plenty fast (though nowhere near my M3 or the M5 I drove on the ring), the engine response changes in the different modes, but the sound doesn't. It is just quiet and subdued, albeit strong and elastic..
Which brings me to my MPPSK install after the summer. This in my next post, have to work now
