Economy Run

Roadsters are not generally noted for their fuel economy, but the Mazda MX5 may well be the exception that proves the rule.

This week I went on a brief overnight jaunt interstate across a range of roads, and without driving with any consideration for economy.

The MX5 averaged 6.93 litres/100km, with a best of 6.7 litres/100km from Glen Innes to Tamworth. Much of this road is characterised by long climbs, during which I downshifted to fifth to maintain momentum.

The fuel I was using was a mixture of 95 and 98RON. You can't buy 95RON (which is what I run it on) in NSW without ethanol. I prefer to avoid the blends, as the car wasn't built for them. It likes 98RON and seems more responsive (and more economical) using this fuel. You do pay through the nose for it.

The most enjoyable aspect of long distance motoring in this car is that it can be driven in two different modes.

You can put the top and the windows up, turn on the air and the stereo, and drive it much in the same way as you would a sedan. In this mode it's comfortable, not too noisy, and relaxing.

Or you can put the top and the windows down, leave the radio off, and take in all the smells and sounds this liberates. This was the way to go through the wine country on the granite belt.

With the wind in the right direction, you could smell the vintage.

Grey Porridge

This week She Who Must be Obeyed (the fleet manager) set me up in a Toyota Camry.

Again, this car needed to get kilometres up in a hurry because it was brand new, and was due its first (1000km) service. My trip was about this length - a bit more as it turned out - so I picked it up just after it had been delivered with 30km on the clock.

Typical Toyota - it smelt funny, had all the ambiance of an Electrolux, and behaved exactly as the brochures described.

It also had Bluetooth, but after driving myself nuts, I gave up on trying to get it to work. I had better and less time-consuming things to do. As a rule of thumb I never read instruction manuals. They're for dropkicks who can't work stuff out by themselves - but in the end out of exasperation I was forced to. I've set up pleny of Bluetooth programs before (in Hyundais, Volkswagens and Fords) without hassles and without handbooks..

Using the handbook just made it worse, as the instructions read as if they'd been translated badly from Japanese into Russian, and then back into English.

What I finished up with was a kind of lottery. Sometimes the audio would pick up the phone part of the iPhone, sometimes the iPod part. It was entirely unpredictable as to which was operating at any given time, so I had to take the precaution of having my Blueant set up as a back-up. I tend to get lots of calls on the road.

Funny thing is, no matter what mode it was working in, it always muted the audio when a call came through.

Driving this thing reminded me of my son's 1996 Camry. Not much has changed.

It was as dull as grey porridge. The duco was actually white - hence the refrigerator reference.

I can't imagine anything less like an MX5 than this car.