![]() | #46 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 10,100
Thanked: 9,572 Times
| ![]() i thought i saw 93 octane at the indian oil pump when i was filling up my accord. i didnt check out the price though. |
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![]() | #47 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
| ![]() I took the Z4 to Pune & Lavasa today. I'll try & capture my experience below. I left Bombay at about 630am. Reached the beginning of the expressway in 54 min. That's 45km. Avg speed of 50km/h. I didn't expect this much traffic, but I guess everyone was heading out of town for the long weekend. Fuel economy 9.5km/l. I was impressed!! Next leg was from here till Le Meridien Pune. Again traffic on E-way was crazy. I was actually using the xenons like strobes to get thru traffic. (I kept the beams on & then flashed when required) Overall Fuel Economy dropped to 6.9km/l. From Pune, I refueled & headed to Lavasa. Once you go past the toll booth on the road to Lavasa, it turns into a roadsters playground! Its the best stretch of asphalt twisties I've seen in this part of the world!! 2 lane road, perfect surface with not one pothole. There are a few villages on the way for which you need to slow down but its no biggie. I got to really test the car out, & I was blown away. I put the Dynamic Driving Control in Sport mode & slotted the gearbox into S. I was turning left & right all the time in quick succession and felt that S wasn't really keeping a gear, so I switched to Manual. In manual, I couldn't adjust to using the Bimmers new paddle shifters (thumb operation for downshift, finger operation for upshift). It just didn't feel comfortable. So I switched to using the stick. That TOO was not intuitive enough since its - up + down, opposite of what I'm used to with my previous cars. So I kept selecting the wrong gear for a while. Still the ride was fantastic. Not having to worry about the road conditions, I could freely punch it at every instance. Being low, I was able to throw it into corners at good speeds. I kept it between 60 & 120km/h. It actually put a good strain on my neck muscles to maintain my head upright while doing sharp left right turns at minimum 60km/h. Felt GOOOD!!!! On the way back from Lavasa to Pune, I got more comfortable with the paddles than the stick. I guess its a matter of getting used to something different. Its not only the thumb+fingers operation, but also the 'feel' of them. Its got a higher 'resistance' than that of other cars that I've owned (Touareg, CLS550, Accord). So you have to click harder. Would like to hear from other Bimmer owners on their experience with it. The turbo was FANTASTIC for this kind of driving. The real benefit of the dual clutch setup also came out on the twisties. Super fast shifts, giving near seamless power delivery. I was shifting back & forth between 2-3-4 (brief moments upto 6th) throughout the journey on Lavasa road & never once did I feel the need to hang on to one gear, so as not to get interrupted. What I mean is, when you shift up, there is a momentary loss of resistance, which sometime throws you off when you're right in the middle of negotiating a quick sprint & then a sharp turn. You end up having to brake, & down shift again. So sometimes its best to hold on to the lower gear & let it rev higher. I never felt the need to do this in the Z4 because the dual clutch allowed me to shift up, use that gear, brake, shift down & attack the corner. At no point of time was I revving higher than 5,000rpm. I want to keep it below that until about 2,000km. The seats are fantastic. They hold you in TIGHT even through all the quick turns. At the same time they are very comfortable. I drove a total of 300km of city,highway & twisties in 6 hours & wasn't exhausted at all. 6 hours in traffic however, would have driven me nuts & I would have bitched about the seats, A.C., lack of a bottle/cup holder, yada yada ![]() On the way back I managed a 10km/l fuel economy till the start of the expressway! Last edited by n_aditya : 2nd April 2013 at 17:42. Reason: high speed figures edited out |
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![]() | #48 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
| ![]() snapshots of the on-board Journey Computer for each leg. |
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![]() | #49 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
| ![]() A picture of the twisties and others of the car. Notice the roof mechanism. Its the first one I've seen which does not fold in the middle. The rear panel would go on top of the roof panel, and then the 2 units would fold into the trunk as one. Last edited by Eddy : 28th February 2010 at 14:17. Reason: Corrected typo. Post can be edited by the poster within 20 mins. Thanks |
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![]() | #50 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Kolkata
Posts: 1,684
Thanked: 130 Times
| ![]() You sure had a helluva time. You said you own(ed) a CLS 550. If you don't mind can we have some pictures of that gorgeous car please? |
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![]() | #51 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
| ![]() found one for now. Its a 2008 CLS 550 with the AMG kit. |
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![]() | #52 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 10,100
Thanked: 9,572 Times
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![]() | #53 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: chennai
Posts: 759
Thanked: 14 Times
| ![]() Nice write up and a good set of pics.Have you tried the cruise control in Z4? |
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![]() | #54 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Trivandrum, KL
Posts: 4,894
Thanked: 6,729 Times
| ![]() Nice write up man ! I'm dumbstruck that you got 10.6kmpl in E-ways. ![]() Love the interiors, but im sure its a task in itself to maintain it in white. Saw your car in the Supercar event video yesterday. It got a nice note i should say ![]() For those who missed the video, here is it - And about the roof,The same Hardtop mechanism works on the M3 hardtop ci too. |
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![]() | #55 | |||
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
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![]() | #56 | |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Kolkata
Posts: 1,684
Thanked: 130 Times
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![]() | #57 | |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Mumbai
Posts: 79
Thanked: 13 Times
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I HAD a VW Touareg, CLS550. And a Honda CBR1000rr motorcycle ![]() | |
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![]() | #58 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() | ![]() Interesting roof mechanism. The Z4 looks more beautiful with the top down IMO. Pretty good F.E numbers there ![]() |
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![]() | #59 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Bombay
Posts: 1,231
Thanked: 372 Times
| ![]() Nice write-up SSP. Sweet car. Ecks, I couldn't agree with you more, I think I'd consider a Z4M over the M3 as well if I was looking for a fun car and didn't care about practicality issues. Since we're all talking about fuel efficiency, I just felt I HAD to chip in with a shot of my M3's onboard computer taken last year on the Bombay-Pune expressway. Granted this is an absolute best case scenario, with a downhill ghat section and a gentle right foot, but still, not bad for a 4L V8, right?! Sorry the image is blurry, I took it with my phone the moment I saw it! ![]() |
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![]() | #60 |
Distinguished - BHPian ![]() ![]() Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Gurgaon
Posts: 5,326
Thanked: 16,707 Times
| ![]() Awesome ride SSP. Great pics and a very nice write-up there. Congratulations ![]() |
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