Nissan X-Trail

We have been looking at getting a new car for a while and we were finally in a position to pull the trigger a couple of weeks ago.  We wanted a family vehicle that would be big enough for road trips but economical on fuel and the pocket.  We looked at the Honda CRV, Volvo XC60, Land Rover Discovery, KIA Sorento, Toyota Fortuner and Nissan Xtrail.  We settled on the Xtrail as it ticked all our boxes.

I have been scouring the web for the last month and have a pretty good idea of what the various cars go for.  When I came across a deal in Hillcrest for an X-Trail XE 2.0 DCI that seemed to good to be true I asked Greg to drop in and have a lookieloo with his critical eye.  Greg couldn’t fault the car and everything seemed legitimate so we decided to buy it.

I flew to Durban on the 5^th of October a Saturday morning arriving at 09H30.  Greg picked me up and gave me a ride straight to the dealer at Hillcrest Toyota, 10H15.  The car looked great and even better than I had expected, a done deal.  I thanked Greg, signed some papers and hit the road at 11H00.

The car went very well.  The driving position is awesome and the Xtrail made mincemeat of the Transkei.  Umtata is more of a mess than I remember, I stopped at the shell for a Pie and a Redbull.  I filled up again at the Kei cuttings garage.

I then side stepped East London by driving past the Casino and taking the N2 Amalinda turn off.  I took the “SANTA” route around the airport back to the coastal road and headed straight on to Port Alfred.  I filled up with diesel at Storms river by which stage it was raining heavily and I made it to Plett at 23H00.  That’s 1100km in 12hours, an average of 105km/hour excluding time for stops.  At this point I was doing 7.8l/100km according to the trip meter.

The next morning I left Plett around 6H30 and 5 hours later I was in Cape Town.

By now the fuel consumption according to the trip meter had dropped to 7.7l/100km.  I worked out my exact fuel consumption to be 7.883km/100km which tells me the trip meter is 97% accurate and I guess that’s OK.  I wasn’t trying to be economical so I think I could get that under 7l/100km but that would mean not breaking 100km/hour. Another time perhaps.

Notes from my trip:

• The Xtrail is awesome, no rattles
• Jonathan at Toyota Hillcrest was great
• The Transkei is still a shambles
• The Xtrail is awesome on very wet roads
• Redbull makes me sing very loud
• It’s obvious the DA run the Western Cape and
• The Xtrail is awesome.

I had the car transferred into my name on Monday morning and the new CA number plates were made and on the car before noon.  On Tuesday I bought some roof racks, a bike carrier and a roof box from Thule.  On Thursday afternoon we packed up the car for a road trip to Plett.  The car was fully loaded with the box and surfboard on the roof and the bikes on the bike carrier.  This time I averaged 8.1l/100km.  I guess that’s what a bit of wind resistance and nagging kids will do to the fuel consumption.

Thanks to Greg for his help, we were very chuffed with all his input.

Anyway we are home again so life with a new car can begin.  “Feet off the seats and don’t spill your juice!”