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There isn’t much that’s more lame than a LOOK GUYZ I WENT ON THE HOLIDAYZ thread, is there? I particularly dislike them and I’m sure to be first in line with a ‘worst ‘I went on holiday’ thread evar’ remark.
But, as with last time, I’ve had quite a few requests to do a sort of write-up of my recent trip, so I guess I might as well. Beats arguing about diesels, right? I’m keeping it car-biased so if you are expecting a detailed review of Sea World or what I thought of the Grand Canyon, which I didn’t drive to, then you’ll be disappointed. What follows over the next 2 threads is an account of the road trip side of things, and some motoring related observations.
Now we’ll split into two threads, as I’ll get bored typing 6000 words in one go and you guys probably wont even read that big a wall of text anyway. Firstly, a car review. Then, a motoring trip explanation thingy in a few days.
The Car.
I opted for a convertible Ford Mustang, the classic American road trip car. It seemed the obvious choice and the deal through Hertz was fantastic. It worked out at just under £200 a week and that included all insurance with zero excess. Quite literally, if you dropped the car off with all the wheels hanging off and the bumper in the passenger seat, you had nothing to pay.
So the car itself – a 2011 Ford Mustang 3.7 V6 Convertible. The newly face lifted 2011 Mustang is quite a change to the range. The V6 used to get quite a lot of stick – it developed a whole 204bhp from it’s 4 litre V6, most of which was eaten by it’s godawful automatic gearbox. The result was a very slow tourist-special.
With the 2011 car, things are different. The engine is smaller – its now 3.7 litres – but the power is very different. It now delivers an astonishing 304bhp and despite this claims to offer 30mpg on the Highway (US MPG, so that’s about 34-35 UK MPG). So, it seems Ford were very much of the opinion that you could have your cake AND eat it.
Lets cut to the first impressions. Looks are classic Mustang – aggressive front end, classically styled rear, two large exhausts and a folding roof. Excellent stuff.
Now we move to the interior.
I had high expectations from the interior. After all, the 2011 is supposed to offer a huge step forwards in interior quality and you’ll remember Gibbo believing that the interior of his 2006 Mustang was on par with that of his BMW M3.
Oh dear. Sadly it’s not even Ford Mondeo in here, let alone BMW M3. The main expanse of the dash is actually pretty good with decent soft touch plastics, but you get the distinct impression Ford thought that if that slapped a big quality bit in, we’d gloss over the rest. Lots of cheap plastics and bizarrely placed switchgear. It had only one stalk, so the trip computer controls were all on the actual dashboard itself, which was both strange and irritating.
The car in question appeared to have some sort of premium package – it included Leather trim and Microsoft SYNC. Microsoft SYNC is a new thing from Ford in the US – it’s basically a voice controlled Bluetooth telephone and USB media player integration system. It docked with the ipod seamlessly and worked perfectly, with track listings being displayed on the centre screen. Sadly, though, it seemed Ford had run out of screens and instead opted to fit the V6 Mustang with an LCD screen taken from a late 1990’s coke vending machine. But still – it worked well. The car also had a ‘Shaker’ premium stereo, which was pretty good. At least 10 times as good as the stereo in your average BMW, anyway.
So, it’s an American Ford. Gibbo aside, you expect crap quality, and what you got was actually… pretty crap quality. So it’s a step up in that regard. But never mind, there is more to a car than the interior, right? Although it would be nice if the weather seal between the front and rear windows actually sealed when you raised the window every time, rather than most of the time.
Perhaps more alarmingly were the noticeable signs of wear and plethora of rattles from the car. I know, I know, it’s a rental car, and convertibles always rattle but this car had barely a couple of thousand miles on it and was virtually brand new. Despite this, the leather drivers seat was already beginning to look baggy and there was noticeable wear to the steering wheel and the leather on the gearshift. I’d like to think that a brand new car should stand up pretty well to even the most heavy handed of rental buffoons for at least 6 months!
Out on the road.
The Mustang is a pretty tidy handling car. It’s certainly no sports car but it isn’t a huge boat like you’d expect from anything with cart springs and an American badge on the bonnet. The alloys had pretty high profile tyres which contributed to more bodyroll than I’d expect from ‘sports’ orientated car, but on the flipside this did help the ride a bit. It’s nothing like as well planted and sure footed as, say, a 330i, neither does the steering offer anything like as much feedback, but it’s far from bad. Pretty good, by American car standards. Which I’ll admit, is very much like being top of the class in Special School but we’ve all got to start somewhere, right?
Lets move onto performance. From a standstill, the lights go green, you put your food right to the floor, and this is a pretty quickly accelerating car. It doesn’t feel like 305bhp by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s quick. I was very much looking forward to enjoying this car over the rest of the trip.
Uh oh. A problem.
Sadly despite fitting this car with what seems like a very good engine, Ford have also fitted it with what seems like a very bad gearbox. I know how to drive automatics. I’ve driven plenty. But this one was just a complete and utter nightmare. For wafting about town in traffic at normal speeds it was perfectly acceptable but once you get the car on the open road, the box fights the rest of the car in a desperate attempt to make everything, well, totally crappy.
It ALWAYS wants to shift up a gear. This box has one mission in live – to get the car into 5th gear as quickly as is humanely possible. It doesn’t care if you are cruising on the freeway or trying to work your way up a steep mountain pass, it wants 5th, and will change up at any given opportunity.
On numerous occasions I was simply trying to maintain the speed limit of 55mph on some of the more hilly and twisting sections of the route (Yes, America has corners) and the box fought me the whole way. It was so bad that I often found myself dropping down to 40 or even 30mph as every single time I applied a bit more throttle to maintain speed I found that we were doing 1200rpm in 5th gear and therefore had absolutely no power available. If you accelerated, it would kick down a gear. Great. Really handy. Because 1700rpm in 4th is just as useful for accelerating up a hill.
So, you had one remaining choice. Full kickdown. Foot to the floor. Even this resulted in several seconds of what I can only describe as ****ing about, but once it had got it, the car was off like a rocket. Just what you need approaching another 100 degree turn with a 2000ft drop over the other side – not.
So, effectively then, the Mustang had two modes – warp speed 9, or granny speed. There was just never a sense of effortless performance as and when you needed it. It was constantly frustrating and could quite easily be solved by fitting a decent box, or if that’s too much effort, just adding a tiptronic function to this one to allow better manual override. The box DID have a manual override but only if you wanted to lock it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd. And changing from 2nd to 3rd or 3rd to 2nd quickly using the manual over-ride was easier said than done – this feature is clearly aimed at towing, or snow, or… anything but making decent progress over mountain passes I guess. It desperately needs a simple up/down tiptronic function or even a Sports mode.
What a crying shame. I can only imagine how many billion times better this car is with the standard manual transmission. It’s probably quite quick. It certainly felt quick the few times I was brave enough to go for Banzai mode when overtaking a truck or something.
Anyway, the rest of the car.
With the roof up I was actually quite surprised at how refined it was. After a 4-5 hour freeway slog from San Diego to Las Vegas in temperatures which at one point exceeded 42c, I didn’t feel like I needed a lie down, or some new legs, or any of the other things you feel after you do a big trip in a dreary European hatchback. Sure, there was road and wind noise – it has a canvas roof – but it wasn’t ever THAT bad. It’s certainly a more refined car than the other convertible I have a lot of experience of, the BMW Z4.
With the roof down the car is desperately in need of a wind deflector, as the cabin becomes one huge gas station receipt sucking wind vortex at speeds of over 60mph.
So, lets sum up on the Mustang.
As a car to actually own? No thanks. It’s so nearly great, yet flawed in too many ways. There just isn’t a feeling that its been built by anyone who gives a stuff. Noticeable wear and plenty of rattles on a 3 month old car inspires no confidence, neither does the flimsy and illogically placed switchgear. There are gems here – it drives very nicely and the engine is pretty good – but then in other areas it has shortcomings.
As a car to rent on a trip like this? Spot on. It wasn’t my car so I didn’t care that it rattled or that Stevie Wonder put the interior together. I did care the gearbox annoyed the hell out of me, but hey, the rest of the experience was great fun. It’s a brilliant American road trip companion.
Oh, and here is a weird one. This is probably the least exclusive car in the entire world. Everywhere touristy I went, 600 people were already there, with a Mustang convertible. Seriously, these things are everywhere, every single one with a tell-tale rental company barcode in the window.
This is a picture of my car parked in one of the most inhospitable places on earth – Death Valley:
Yet despite this, the car turns heads like you wouldn’t believe.
I lost count of the number of times people took photos of the car as I was parked. I was approached by at least 5 different Americans complimenting the car, asking me what it was like, etc. Make no mistake – the Americans LOVE the Mustang. People in this country love cars. Park a flash car up in the UK and everyone thinks you are a prat. Park one up in the USA, and everyone wants to know more about it.
So, a bit rubbishy but great fun on a road trip.
Which brings me onto the surprising appendix to this section – fuel economy.
Ford claim 30mpg highway. From a 3.7 litre V6 with an auto gearbox. What did I actually manage?
Well, thanks to the fact I am tediously boring geek…err I mean a handy android phone app, I have the complete and detailed fuel economy stastics for the trip.
Over a total distance of 2240 miles (Approx) mix of freeways, highways, mountains, deserts and cities, the Mustang returned the following fuel economy figures. They are all in UK MPG so are directly comparable to our cars.
Average Economy: 29.87mpg
Best tank-full average: 34.91mpg
Worst tank-full average: 16.51mpg (This was entirely in LA)
Total gas spend for 2240 miles: $278.32
Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s pretty good economy.
The 2011 Mustang V6 – A great rental car.
But, as with last time, I’ve had quite a few requests to do a sort of write-up of my recent trip, so I guess I might as well. Beats arguing about diesels, right? I’m keeping it car-biased so if you are expecting a detailed review of Sea World or what I thought of the Grand Canyon, which I didn’t drive to, then you’ll be disappointed. What follows over the next 2 threads is an account of the road trip side of things, and some motoring related observations.
Now we’ll split into two threads, as I’ll get bored typing 6000 words in one go and you guys probably wont even read that big a wall of text anyway. Firstly, a car review. Then, a motoring trip explanation thingy in a few days.
The Car.
I opted for a convertible Ford Mustang, the classic American road trip car. It seemed the obvious choice and the deal through Hertz was fantastic. It worked out at just under £200 a week and that included all insurance with zero excess. Quite literally, if you dropped the car off with all the wheels hanging off and the bumper in the passenger seat, you had nothing to pay.
So the car itself – a 2011 Ford Mustang 3.7 V6 Convertible. The newly face lifted 2011 Mustang is quite a change to the range. The V6 used to get quite a lot of stick – it developed a whole 204bhp from it’s 4 litre V6, most of which was eaten by it’s godawful automatic gearbox. The result was a very slow tourist-special.
With the 2011 car, things are different. The engine is smaller – its now 3.7 litres – but the power is very different. It now delivers an astonishing 304bhp and despite this claims to offer 30mpg on the Highway (US MPG, so that’s about 34-35 UK MPG). So, it seems Ford were very much of the opinion that you could have your cake AND eat it.
Lets cut to the first impressions. Looks are classic Mustang – aggressive front end, classically styled rear, two large exhausts and a folding roof. Excellent stuff.
Now we move to the interior.
I had high expectations from the interior. After all, the 2011 is supposed to offer a huge step forwards in interior quality and you’ll remember Gibbo believing that the interior of his 2006 Mustang was on par with that of his BMW M3.
Oh dear. Sadly it’s not even Ford Mondeo in here, let alone BMW M3. The main expanse of the dash is actually pretty good with decent soft touch plastics, but you get the distinct impression Ford thought that if that slapped a big quality bit in, we’d gloss over the rest. Lots of cheap plastics and bizarrely placed switchgear. It had only one stalk, so the trip computer controls were all on the actual dashboard itself, which was both strange and irritating.
The car in question appeared to have some sort of premium package – it included Leather trim and Microsoft SYNC. Microsoft SYNC is a new thing from Ford in the US – it’s basically a voice controlled Bluetooth telephone and USB media player integration system. It docked with the ipod seamlessly and worked perfectly, with track listings being displayed on the centre screen. Sadly, though, it seemed Ford had run out of screens and instead opted to fit the V6 Mustang with an LCD screen taken from a late 1990’s coke vending machine. But still – it worked well. The car also had a ‘Shaker’ premium stereo, which was pretty good. At least 10 times as good as the stereo in your average BMW, anyway.
So, it’s an American Ford. Gibbo aside, you expect crap quality, and what you got was actually… pretty crap quality. So it’s a step up in that regard. But never mind, there is more to a car than the interior, right? Although it would be nice if the weather seal between the front and rear windows actually sealed when you raised the window every time, rather than most of the time.
Perhaps more alarmingly were the noticeable signs of wear and plethora of rattles from the car. I know, I know, it’s a rental car, and convertibles always rattle but this car had barely a couple of thousand miles on it and was virtually brand new. Despite this, the leather drivers seat was already beginning to look baggy and there was noticeable wear to the steering wheel and the leather on the gearshift. I’d like to think that a brand new car should stand up pretty well to even the most heavy handed of rental buffoons for at least 6 months!
Out on the road.
The Mustang is a pretty tidy handling car. It’s certainly no sports car but it isn’t a huge boat like you’d expect from anything with cart springs and an American badge on the bonnet. The alloys had pretty high profile tyres which contributed to more bodyroll than I’d expect from ‘sports’ orientated car, but on the flipside this did help the ride a bit. It’s nothing like as well planted and sure footed as, say, a 330i, neither does the steering offer anything like as much feedback, but it’s far from bad. Pretty good, by American car standards. Which I’ll admit, is very much like being top of the class in Special School but we’ve all got to start somewhere, right?
Lets move onto performance. From a standstill, the lights go green, you put your food right to the floor, and this is a pretty quickly accelerating car. It doesn’t feel like 305bhp by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s quick. I was very much looking forward to enjoying this car over the rest of the trip.
Uh oh. A problem.
Sadly despite fitting this car with what seems like a very good engine, Ford have also fitted it with what seems like a very bad gearbox. I know how to drive automatics. I’ve driven plenty. But this one was just a complete and utter nightmare. For wafting about town in traffic at normal speeds it was perfectly acceptable but once you get the car on the open road, the box fights the rest of the car in a desperate attempt to make everything, well, totally crappy.
It ALWAYS wants to shift up a gear. This box has one mission in live – to get the car into 5th gear as quickly as is humanely possible. It doesn’t care if you are cruising on the freeway or trying to work your way up a steep mountain pass, it wants 5th, and will change up at any given opportunity.
On numerous occasions I was simply trying to maintain the speed limit of 55mph on some of the more hilly and twisting sections of the route (Yes, America has corners) and the box fought me the whole way. It was so bad that I often found myself dropping down to 40 or even 30mph as every single time I applied a bit more throttle to maintain speed I found that we were doing 1200rpm in 5th gear and therefore had absolutely no power available. If you accelerated, it would kick down a gear. Great. Really handy. Because 1700rpm in 4th is just as useful for accelerating up a hill.
So, you had one remaining choice. Full kickdown. Foot to the floor. Even this resulted in several seconds of what I can only describe as ****ing about, but once it had got it, the car was off like a rocket. Just what you need approaching another 100 degree turn with a 2000ft drop over the other side – not.
So, effectively then, the Mustang had two modes – warp speed 9, or granny speed. There was just never a sense of effortless performance as and when you needed it. It was constantly frustrating and could quite easily be solved by fitting a decent box, or if that’s too much effort, just adding a tiptronic function to this one to allow better manual override. The box DID have a manual override but only if you wanted to lock it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd. And changing from 2nd to 3rd or 3rd to 2nd quickly using the manual over-ride was easier said than done – this feature is clearly aimed at towing, or snow, or… anything but making decent progress over mountain passes I guess. It desperately needs a simple up/down tiptronic function or even a Sports mode.
What a crying shame. I can only imagine how many billion times better this car is with the standard manual transmission. It’s probably quite quick. It certainly felt quick the few times I was brave enough to go for Banzai mode when overtaking a truck or something.
Anyway, the rest of the car.
With the roof up I was actually quite surprised at how refined it was. After a 4-5 hour freeway slog from San Diego to Las Vegas in temperatures which at one point exceeded 42c, I didn’t feel like I needed a lie down, or some new legs, or any of the other things you feel after you do a big trip in a dreary European hatchback. Sure, there was road and wind noise – it has a canvas roof – but it wasn’t ever THAT bad. It’s certainly a more refined car than the other convertible I have a lot of experience of, the BMW Z4.
With the roof down the car is desperately in need of a wind deflector, as the cabin becomes one huge gas station receipt sucking wind vortex at speeds of over 60mph.
So, lets sum up on the Mustang.
As a car to actually own? No thanks. It’s so nearly great, yet flawed in too many ways. There just isn’t a feeling that its been built by anyone who gives a stuff. Noticeable wear and plenty of rattles on a 3 month old car inspires no confidence, neither does the flimsy and illogically placed switchgear. There are gems here – it drives very nicely and the engine is pretty good – but then in other areas it has shortcomings.
As a car to rent on a trip like this? Spot on. It wasn’t my car so I didn’t care that it rattled or that Stevie Wonder put the interior together. I did care the gearbox annoyed the hell out of me, but hey, the rest of the experience was great fun. It’s a brilliant American road trip companion.
Oh, and here is a weird one. This is probably the least exclusive car in the entire world. Everywhere touristy I went, 600 people were already there, with a Mustang convertible. Seriously, these things are everywhere, every single one with a tell-tale rental company barcode in the window.
This is a picture of my car parked in one of the most inhospitable places on earth – Death Valley:
Yet despite this, the car turns heads like you wouldn’t believe.
I lost count of the number of times people took photos of the car as I was parked. I was approached by at least 5 different Americans complimenting the car, asking me what it was like, etc. Make no mistake – the Americans LOVE the Mustang. People in this country love cars. Park a flash car up in the UK and everyone thinks you are a prat. Park one up in the USA, and everyone wants to know more about it.
So, a bit rubbishy but great fun on a road trip.
Which brings me onto the surprising appendix to this section – fuel economy.
Ford claim 30mpg highway. From a 3.7 litre V6 with an auto gearbox. What did I actually manage?
Well, thanks to the fact I am tediously boring geek…err I mean a handy android phone app, I have the complete and detailed fuel economy stastics for the trip.
Over a total distance of 2240 miles (Approx) mix of freeways, highways, mountains, deserts and cities, the Mustang returned the following fuel economy figures. They are all in UK MPG so are directly comparable to our cars.
Average Economy: 29.87mpg
Best tank-full average: 34.91mpg
Worst tank-full average: 16.51mpg (This was entirely in LA)
Total gas spend for 2240 miles: $278.32
Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s pretty good economy.
The 2011 Mustang V6 – A great rental car.
