thegarageblog.co.uk : A long journey, some dangerous moves and a little Wingle.

Hi all, it’s been a while since my last blog post as I’ve been away for a little ‘holiday within a holiday’ to Brazil, followed by a few days in another city in Paraguay. Unfortunately, neither place had coverage for our 3G modem, so I’d been effectively cut-off from the internet and had to do what I did before I was spoiled by mobile broadband (i.e. nothing)

As it happens, the time not spent updating my Facebook status or checking for celebrity gossip on Holy Moly meant I was able to see a bit of the countryside during a series of very long drives.

As there were 7 of us travelling with numerous suitcases and assorted holiday stuff, there wasn’t a hope of fitting into our Toyota Rav 4. Despite being the long wheelbase 5 door version, it’s utterly useless for legroom and space to put anything and only comfortably seats 2 adults in the back. The prospect of covering almost 800 miles in a week filled me with sufficient dread to hire a somewhat larger vehicle and leave the Rav 4 in our garden, under a shady tree for a good rest.

Thanks to the good folks at National Rent a Car of Asuncion, we were promptly delivered a light green 2007 Hyundai H1. This is basically a large van with 8 seats, a sliding side door and loads of luggage space. Unfortunately, as I discovered after about 500 yards, it had no synchromesh on 3^rd gear and possibly possessed the least powerful Diesel engine ever fitted to such a large vehicle! Now, I wasn’t expecting it to be particularly sporty, but I’d hoped it might at least be able to keep-up with traffic whilst fully-laden. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that in the UK I drive a 2008 Mercedes Vito Sport Dualiner van, fitted with the 204 BHP V6 CDi Diesel engine and automatic gearbox. This engine is similar to the one fitted to the older E300 range of cars, and is extremely smooth and very powerful. 0-62 takes around 7 seconds and its max speed is over 120MPH. In extreme contrast, The 2.5 litre Kia-sourced Diesel engine fitted to the Hyundai H1 doesn’t even have a turbocharger (yes, I even opened the bonnet to check!) and produces around 70 BHP at the most. As a result, the merciless thrashing I had to bestow upon the poor thing just to get us up even a moderate incline was equally painful for the van and me! Worse still, if attempting a hill start, I’d have to rev the engine to its ‘redline’ of around 4000 RPM and slip the clutch until it smelled, just to stop the engine from stalling.

Overtaking manoeuvres (of which plenty were needed on our journey) were an interesting affair, and required considerable planning and a strong heart. If overtaking on a downhill stretch, with the accelerator pedal buried in the rubber floormat, it would get from 80 KMH (50 MPH) up to almost 120 KMH (75 MPH) in comfortably less than a minute, leaving my passengers relatively un-terrified. On an uphill stretch however, without me changing down a gear or three, the speed would drop-off to almost 65 KMH (40 MPH) within the same time. As a result, I’d have to change down from 5^th to 4^th to (crunchy) 3^rd very quickly, just before we lost momentum. Some inclines required a hideous thrashing in 2^nd gear, just to avoid stopping completely. If overtaking something really slow such as a battered Yugo, or a smoke-belching Mercedes 113 lorry, it actually faired OK, but more often than not, we were being overtaken by everything else on the road. More frustrating still was when after a particularly good stretch of road where I was able to overtake maybe 10 or more slow moving vehicles (and was particularly proud), one of our family would need an urgent toilet or refreshment stop. As I’d be waiting to rejoin the main road, all of the vehicles I’d managed to overtake in the previous ½ hour came thundering past us, leaving me to do the whole thing again!

Apart from the lack of performance, I became extremely attached to the Hyundai and came to appreciate it for what it did do, rather than what it didn’t. Despite the near 40 Degree heat outside, the two extremely powerful air conditioners (the rear one wouldn’t have looked out of place in a restaurant!) kept us all cool, to the extent that my mother even asked for a cardigan at one point! The interior offered huge space for us all to sit comfortably and it easily bettered 25MPG the whole time, despite being driven with the aircon on full and my foot to the floor for most of the week! With Diesel being only 78p a litre here, it only cost around £30 to fill, and did more than 230 miles on each tank. It never missed a beat for the whole journey, despite having over 50,000 miles already on the clock, and didn’t use a drop of oil.

As I handed the keys back to the chap from National, I was actually quite sad and wished we could’ve kept it a bit longer. Still, at almost £650 for a week’s rental, it’s back to the Rav 4 until the end of my trip!

During my drive across Paraguay, Brazil and the Argentine border, I saw many interesting sights on the roads that you just don’t see in the heavily-policed and relatively law-abiding land of England.

Apart from the usual families of 4 or 5 on a single motorcycle, at one point approaching the city of Encarnacion in Paraguay, we were passing through some road works. A helmetless motorcyclist on a Chinese-built Honda 150 copy in front was travelling at around 20 MPH, wobbling around a lot and seemed to be crouching down over the handlebars. I naturally assumed that it was to decrease his wind resistance and gain some speed, but as we overtook him, it was obvious what he was looking down at. He was holding a mobile phone and was busily texting! Apart from the fact he wasn’t wearing a helmet, this was possibly one of the more dangerous moves I’d seen – until this afternoon! A cyclist was holding onto the side of a bus and being pulled along, with another bus next to him. We were doing about 30 MPH behind him, and I was probably more scared than he was!

Anyway, just before I finish, I must mention another wierd and wonderful vehicle I’ve seen a few of. Now, we all know that the Chinese are a major car producer, and apart from some of the makes we’ve heard of (like MG / Rover and Nanchang), I’ve discovered another brand that’s pretty popular in South America, but isn’t sold in the UK yet. The make is Great Wall (as in Great Wall of China) and the model names are far more amusing! Apart from the ‘Florid’, the ‘Gwepiri’, ‘Cowry’, ‘Hover CUV’, ‘Sing’, ‘Sailor’, ‘Safe’ and ‘SoCool’, my favourite by far is a type of 4WD Double Cab pickup, similar to the popular Nissan Navara and Mitsubishi L200. This one is called ‘Wingle’ (yes, honestly) and has a little (excuse the pun) ‘Wingle’ badge on the side, as well as GREAT WALL in huge letters on the back.

Now, I’m pretty sure that if ever the Great Wall Motor Corporation decide to offer their range of reasonably-priced (yet stupidly-named) vehicles for sale in the UK, they’d better employ a damn-good team to come-up with something a bit less likely to cause potential buyers to laugh uncontrollably. I’m sure that a builder-type of chap who needs a rugged 4WD pickup for work wouldn’t want to offer his colleagues a ‘ride home in my Wingle’ – it just doesn’t sound as ‘manly’ as Navara, Warrior or Ranger!