:: OWNER STORIES

» Kayjey's story
Piet Deprez - something to say
Laura Kay's article
Hans Kise - Italy - one year after

:: Kayjey's story chapters

Getting to know the car
Buying my first car
The Coupe within reach
The Coupe arrives
The Coupe on the road
» After a couple of weeks
Two months after delivery
Seven months and dying for more. Unfortunately...

:: After a couple of weeks

The Coupé has been wonderful to drive. In heavy traffic, if you keep it below 2.500 rpm, it's a regular car. If you get past 3.200, you rocket off. I can get about 500km far with one tank, meaning I'm using around 12 liters each 100 km. That's not too much, considering the fact it's new and I push it hard every now and then. But as I said, it's new, and I've got to keep it below 4.000 - 4.500 most of the time.

We enjoy it a lot actually. Many magazines say all kind of things, like: seating position is not very good, brakes do not give enough feedback, a lot of understeer, behaviour is not that of a sports car,... I must say, I think they are wrong. Okay, maybe the steering wheel is a bit too far away for the short-armed among us, but maybe they didn't know the steering wheel can be depth adjusted? I admit, I pulled it out entirely, but my arms are not too long, still I'm not constrained in any way by the position of the seats, nor the pedals, nor anything else.

The brakes? No problem either. Now of course, they're different from those of a BMW or a Punto. You have to really put force on them, but once you're used to it, they're great. I actually think the Seicento I owned needed even harder pressure to break. I really had to get some power there, but the Coupé,... no.

Understeer? Yes, of course. If you hit the accelerator hard in every turn, you get understeer. Maybe they don't know the difference between front-wheel drive and rear wheel drive... It requires a very different approach. But on the whole, you don't even realize how hard you're going in a bend unless you get a friend to drive you or if you see your car being driven hard and you're trying to follow. You'll be amazed.

And then there's some little things. Like when you floor it fully, the aircon switches off. Noticed this on a highway run overtaking somebody. Aircon was getting some 'maintenance' and upon full acceleration I felt warm air getting in. Stepped off the throttle with a 'oh no... there goes the airco' after which it started blowing cold air again. Looked it up and... it's meant to do that!

So let them say what they want, I don't mind. The Coupé feels like a tailor made suit to me, so there will be people that don't fit in it. Though some fiddling with seat adjustments and the such will do the trick for most of us.