AndyC
Player Valuation: £70m
Folks,
There's been a few threads over the years over cars so I thought I'd start one too.
Now I'm very, very fortunate in that for a living, I get to drive all manner of largely prestige cars and often from one end of the country to the other. So given cars are a popular subject, I'd like to offer a guide as to how I find cars from driving, performance, comfort, reliability, practicality and fuel economy perspectives. Obviously, these will be just my personal opinions and for those that don't know me personally, I'm a fairly large unit - 6ft 4ins and circa 16 stone - so comfort, leg room etc is pretty important to me.
So let's start with a piece of classic Italian automotive muscle - Ferrari Portofino.
Let me begin by saying that I love to drive this car, despite the colour it's a real head-turner, and it really is a terrific drive.
As with any high-end performance car, the harder you press the throttle pedal the miles-per-gallon numbers tumble but, and it's a big but to my mind, if you drive this car relatively sensibly i.e, more or less to the speed limits or at least up to 10% over the limit, the Portofino can and will return 40+ mpg. Thrash it, and the mpg drops as low as the low 20s or less.
Needless to say, performance is impressive and some. Acceleration is extremely good and having a low centre of gravity and low profile tyres, it sticks to the road like baby poo to a blanket.
From the comfort perspective, the Portofino is surprisingly good for a thoroughbred sports car. The front seats are comfortable and not hip-hugger bucket seats that many other sports cars are fitted with. Electrically operated, the front seats can be set back far enough for a lump like me to get in and feel very happy with the driving position. That said, if the front seats are put as far back as to accommodate a lump like me, there's no leg room whatsoever should you be looking to have passengers in the back seats.
One of the real surprises with the Portofino compared to many other sports cars is it's not ridiculously noisy when driven relatively sensibly - you don't need to have the radio blaring or yell at each other to have a conversation - hit the throttle pedal though and it does growl as a Ferrari should do !!
From a reliability perspective, as with many modern cars, everything is computer/electrically operated and sometimes, fault lights like tyre pressures come on when there isn't any pressure issue - simple answer, whizz it into the dealer and they're usually resolved in just a few minutes of plugging in the diagnostic equipment to clear the false fault.
Now can a sports car ever really be considered practical, well that really is a subjective question. The boot on the Portofino will take two small suitcases but not a lot else. Two people would need to put additional luggage in the back seat.
Overall like I said up front, this is a car I love to drive and long distances in it are not a problem - the Portofino is a seriously impressive car and can be relatively frugal on fuel.
My marks out of ten...
Comfort 8
Fuel Economy 7
Performance 9
Reliability 8
Practicality 4
There's been a few threads over the years over cars so I thought I'd start one too.
Now I'm very, very fortunate in that for a living, I get to drive all manner of largely prestige cars and often from one end of the country to the other. So given cars are a popular subject, I'd like to offer a guide as to how I find cars from driving, performance, comfort, reliability, practicality and fuel economy perspectives. Obviously, these will be just my personal opinions and for those that don't know me personally, I'm a fairly large unit - 6ft 4ins and circa 16 stone - so comfort, leg room etc is pretty important to me.
So let's start with a piece of classic Italian automotive muscle - Ferrari Portofino.
Let me begin by saying that I love to drive this car, despite the colour it's a real head-turner, and it really is a terrific drive.
As with any high-end performance car, the harder you press the throttle pedal the miles-per-gallon numbers tumble but, and it's a big but to my mind, if you drive this car relatively sensibly i.e, more or less to the speed limits or at least up to 10% over the limit, the Portofino can and will return 40+ mpg. Thrash it, and the mpg drops as low as the low 20s or less.
Needless to say, performance is impressive and some. Acceleration is extremely good and having a low centre of gravity and low profile tyres, it sticks to the road like baby poo to a blanket.
From the comfort perspective, the Portofino is surprisingly good for a thoroughbred sports car. The front seats are comfortable and not hip-hugger bucket seats that many other sports cars are fitted with. Electrically operated, the front seats can be set back far enough for a lump like me to get in and feel very happy with the driving position. That said, if the front seats are put as far back as to accommodate a lump like me, there's no leg room whatsoever should you be looking to have passengers in the back seats.
One of the real surprises with the Portofino compared to many other sports cars is it's not ridiculously noisy when driven relatively sensibly - you don't need to have the radio blaring or yell at each other to have a conversation - hit the throttle pedal though and it does growl as a Ferrari should do !!
From a reliability perspective, as with many modern cars, everything is computer/electrically operated and sometimes, fault lights like tyre pressures come on when there isn't any pressure issue - simple answer, whizz it into the dealer and they're usually resolved in just a few minutes of plugging in the diagnostic equipment to clear the false fault.
Now can a sports car ever really be considered practical, well that really is a subjective question. The boot on the Portofino will take two small suitcases but not a lot else. Two people would need to put additional luggage in the back seat.
Overall like I said up front, this is a car I love to drive and long distances in it are not a problem - the Portofino is a seriously impressive car and can be relatively frugal on fuel.
My marks out of ten...
Comfort 8
Fuel Economy 7
Performance 9
Reliability 8
Practicality 4
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