A slower pace

96,000 miles, 10th May 2008

After a busy first 3 years of it's life, my Mk V Golf is currently enjoying a little bit of a breather. Gone are the daily commutes to work. Now I can pick and choose when to use the car, frequently allowing the car to slumber in the garage for days on end. When it does come out, it usually gets a long drive or many relatively short trips combined. In this manner, I hope to still achieve the maximum distance before it requires it's next variable interval service.

I really can't fault the car. This is definitely the best car I've ever had. It's also not costing me anything other than diesel at the moment. The last unexpected maintenance expense was the replacement intercooler hose last November (and that wasn't really the car's fault, more mine!)

I sometimes get to see other, newer cars and I have never really felt disappointed to get back to mine. All those extra gadgets like the auto lights, auto wipers, climate control, etc really make you feel like you have a nice car, even if it is now approaching it's 4th birthday.

Recently I read about Volkswagen's new BlueMotion models which claim to be ultra-efficient. One of the things which they say helps reduce fuel consumption is to automatically stop the engine the minute the car comes to a stop and then restarting it as first gear is selected. I had a thought about this and wondered how much fuel this would save. As an experiment, I've now started to do this manually when I come to a stop and expect to be stationary for say, over 30 seconds. It doesn't really cause any inconvenience, the radio and lights all remain on. Assuming the starter motor doesn't burn out (Do the BlueMotion models have up-rated ones?) I don't see how this can cause any harm. I guess we'll see.