Good Runnings
I’ve had my 2005 Citroën C3 Desire (named Clarence) for 4 months now and I’ve never really said much about it. The car is holding up very well considering it makes a 100 mile round trip to Scunthorpe every week day. So far I’ve already clocked up 13,000 miles in him:
Odometer
A week ago, I drove all the way “down South” with it and have to say that I have been very impressed with it. The car is extremely comfortable and very easy to drive. The steering is feather light, which took some getting used to coming from a car with no Power Steering at all; The steering is as light as the Grande Punto I test drove with the City button turned on.
On the way back, I decided to fill the car up and reset all of the trip/MPG/Average Speed counters and decided to do a little benchmarking. Here are the readouts from the On-Board Computer after the journey:
Trip Counter
Average Miles Per Gallon
Average Speed
The journey was a mixture of town and Motorway driving, including the queues for the Dartford Tunnel, M25 Roadworks and the two lots of Roadworks on the M1. I had my Dipped Beam on for half of the journey and my side lights on for a quarter of the journey. I didn’t have the Air Conditioning turned on for any part of the journey. I also had my sisters TomTom One v3 and my CD Player on at a moderately loud volume. I mention those because some people say that things like that don’t make much of a difference, which of course they do. The headlights and radio take quite a lot of power, which increases Fuel Consumption.
To show this is context, I switched the engine of my car off and left the CD Player running. I have a power meter in my car which is part of my multi-socket adaptor for the Cigarette Lighter. You can see how quickly the power from the battery is drained by the CD player:
You can see that the car will have to work to keep the battery charged. Air Conditioning takes even more power than devices powered by the Cigarette Lighter socket. In my C3, when you turn the Air Conditioning on, you can hear and feel the power been sucked away from the engine. Still, I couldn’t do without it in the summer!
With a 1.4 Litre Petrol engine, the C3 is not exactly designed to be as economic as the smaller engined cars. It’s never going to be as economical as Jill’s Peugeot 107, so I was very happy with this figure because it’s a higher than the 46.3 mpg that is quoted by Citroen themselves. It’s not very often that you find that you can get the Miles Per Gallon that is specified. However, the 57.6 mpg that they quote for Extra-Urban driving is certainly pie in the sky unless you were coasting down a hill the entire time!
There only disappointment was the price that Windscreen Wipers are for it! Whilst down in Surrey, I decided it was high time, especially with the bitter weather, to replace the Wipers. I’m pretty sure the Bosch Wipers that were on the car are the original Wipers that were on the car when it was brand new. They’ve been causing a little bit of grief as of late, especially in the morning when the Windscreen has been cold. So, I decided to pop in Halfords and get them replaced. I was shocked when the Grand Total for my Wiper Blades came to £31.97 and that didn’t include fitting! £16.49 for the Driver’s Side, £8.49 for the Passenger Side and £6.99 for the Rear Wiper Blade. It knocked me back a bit considering a set of 2 Front Wiper Blades for my Mk.1 FIAT Punto was only £16.99! I suppose the consolation was that I could get the full set of Blades from Halfords, whereas I could only get a rear Wiper Blade for the Punto from a FIAT Dealer.
Whilst on the subject of cars, I’d like to take a moment to remember my first car, Pipsqueak that tragically died on the 13th December 2007 whilst attached to a lampost:
