Another new owner
Discussion
Thanks for the warm welcome and advice re. the fuel filler flap. I'll try to see if I can get it working tomorrow.
I was very lucky with the weather on my Alpine drive. Starting from a friend's place near Orange I went east on the D94 through Gap to Briancon and over the col into Italy then turning north to go back into France by the Lac du Mont Cenis down into the valley and then east over the Col de l'Iseran to Val d'Isere. From half way up to Mont Cenis I had virtually no traffic all the way to Val and just a couple of small patches of fog.
I stayed in Val for a couple of wet days then left on a sunny Friday morning driving down to Bourg, up to Beaufort then north through Les Saisies to Megeve where I got onto the autoroute for the rest of the journey to Calais. The traffic was very light to non-existent until after Les Saisies and apart from two short but very heavy showers north of Dijon it was fine all the way.
The car is just fantastic to drive on these mountain roads and sounds great at all speeds. I had to keep the windows open to get the full effect as it's surprisingly quiet with them closed but full acceleration with the sound bouncing off a cliff face next to you is just magnificent. One problem I found was that in sport mode the accelerator pedal becomes so sensitive that a bumpy road ends up with the car kangarooing a bit as the bumps make my foot bounce on the pedal and a positive feedback effect makes this get worse. Switching sport off made the ride smoother in these places. Also a lot of these roads are so bumpy that the car really squirms around a lot if you accelerate hard.
I've got the standard seats and have been surprised at how comfortable they are. I left Val at 7:30am and with the mountain driving and ferry crossing I didn't get home in the UK until after midnight but had no major pains.
The sat nav doesn't really seem to understand much about the roads other than the speed limit so sent me on some wacky routes in Provence down tiny lanes which were theoretically shorter than the main road but are in fact much slower. It did the same thing to me just after crossing into Italy sending me on a route through town rather than the longer but actually much faster tunnel and ended up putting me back behind a tanker that it had taken me ages to get past earlier as a result. Think I'll have to invest in a TomTom or use my phone in future. It's continuous zooming in and out is very annoying too.
I'm still having a bit of a problem working out exactly where the front of the car is so the spoiler has had a few scrapes on kerbs when parking but seems to be surviving OK.
It seems like a much more popular car than any 911 I've had getting various thumbs up and positive comments. I don't think it will be as agile as a GT3 but it's very special in many ways that the GT3 won't be.
One further question : what tyre pressures do other Vantage owners run? The info on the car says 36psi all round but I'm fairly sure it was delivered with the fronts at a lower pressure than this and it's felt firmer since I topped them up.
I was very lucky with the weather on my Alpine drive. Starting from a friend's place near Orange I went east on the D94 through Gap to Briancon and over the col into Italy then turning north to go back into France by the Lac du Mont Cenis down into the valley and then east over the Col de l'Iseran to Val d'Isere. From half way up to Mont Cenis I had virtually no traffic all the way to Val and just a couple of small patches of fog.
I stayed in Val for a couple of wet days then left on a sunny Friday morning driving down to Bourg, up to Beaufort then north through Les Saisies to Megeve where I got onto the autoroute for the rest of the journey to Calais. The traffic was very light to non-existent until after Les Saisies and apart from two short but very heavy showers north of Dijon it was fine all the way.
The car is just fantastic to drive on these mountain roads and sounds great at all speeds. I had to keep the windows open to get the full effect as it's surprisingly quiet with them closed but full acceleration with the sound bouncing off a cliff face next to you is just magnificent. One problem I found was that in sport mode the accelerator pedal becomes so sensitive that a bumpy road ends up with the car kangarooing a bit as the bumps make my foot bounce on the pedal and a positive feedback effect makes this get worse. Switching sport off made the ride smoother in these places. Also a lot of these roads are so bumpy that the car really squirms around a lot if you accelerate hard.
I've got the standard seats and have been surprised at how comfortable they are. I left Val at 7:30am and with the mountain driving and ferry crossing I didn't get home in the UK until after midnight but had no major pains.
The sat nav doesn't really seem to understand much about the roads other than the speed limit so sent me on some wacky routes in Provence down tiny lanes which were theoretically shorter than the main road but are in fact much slower. It did the same thing to me just after crossing into Italy sending me on a route through town rather than the longer but actually much faster tunnel and ended up putting me back behind a tanker that it had taken me ages to get past earlier as a result. Think I'll have to invest in a TomTom or use my phone in future. It's continuous zooming in and out is very annoying too.
I'm still having a bit of a problem working out exactly where the front of the car is so the spoiler has had a few scrapes on kerbs when parking but seems to be surviving OK.
It seems like a much more popular car than any 911 I've had getting various thumbs up and positive comments. I don't think it will be as agile as a GT3 but it's very special in many ways that the GT3 won't be.
One further question : what tyre pressures do other Vantage owners run? The info on the car says 36psi all round but I'm fairly sure it was delivered with the fronts at a lower pressure than this and it's felt firmer since I topped them up.
Wow gorgeous car! Enjoy ! 
, on the way back from lemans with AMDBSNick and Lotto 
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