We (Ms Labrat & I) have just finished a 4200km (2600 miles)trip Brisbane-Canberra-Melbourne-Brisbane trip in our 8. Overall verdict was lousy roads, great car. It is a superb grand tourer. To put paid to the furphy that the 8 is a gas-guzzler, I have attached a tabulation of our petrol consumption over the trip. The weghted average consumption was 9.61L/100km or 24.5 miles per US gallon. We drove the entire journey with the air conditioning on, which had no problems maintaining our preferred cabin temperature of 24C while it was up to 43C outside. We drove the Pacific Highway/Hume Highway route to Melbourne, and the inland Newell-Cunningham Highways on the way home. For those of our non-Australian friends reading this thread, it is worthwhile mentioning that Australian highways are pretty bad. Highways in New South Wales are quite dilapidated, although the Queensland Goondiwindi - Warwick stretch is pretty ghastly too. On an American scale, I guess you'd put our national highways generally on an equivalent with a secondary county two-lane black top. At least the Hume Highway on the Victorian side was halfway repectable.

Oil consumption was also a pleasant surprise - 500mL or less than a pint for the entire trip.

Some caveats on our driving: we drove speed limit (100-110kph)all the way. We were constantly passed by 4WD's and heavy transports. In many stretches, we thought that the 110kph limit was much too fast considering the poor condition of the road. While our car had no problems handling corrugations in the middle of bends, it must be white knuckle stuff for the 4WD racer boys. (I have this theory that the size of the dick of 4WD drivers is inversely proportional to the size of their truck).

We get the feeling that the trip has been very good for our car - it is so smooth and quick now

 

Looks like we have a candidate for post of the day.

What's your current ODO labrat?

 

Yes - thanks for nominations. Post of the day this time to Labrat. Nice report!

Cheers,
Hymee.

 

See -- highest consumption on Sydney-Canberra! We must have a problem in the space-time continuum on that road

Um, I, er, set my cruise a little higher than you -- don't like being overtaken by B-Doubles at all :sheepish:

 

We started out with 10,900km on the clock, and returned with just over 15,000km.

I think that some of the high consumption through Sydney was due to a lot of traffic jams - lots of idling - we gassed up in Chatswood, so had the whole of the north side to contend with, as well as the fun negotiating the city.

Another interesting point: we calibrated the speedo twice on the automatic speed advisory setups they have at both ends of the Hume in Victoria. It reads exactly 2km/h too high at 110km/h. So for an indicated 110, it is actually 108km/h. You can get this kind of accuracy with digital speedos.

We loved the cruise control, and "blipped" the up and down buttons to make incremental speed adjustments to maintain safe vehicle distances. I guess you could say that we drove quite conservatively, but since we were doing considerable distances each day, it was important to us that we were relaxed at all times. I think this contributed to our enjoyment of the drive.

 

Will be interesting to see how you go on your next long trip after 20000kms.

I love the "blip" up and down on the cruise control also. Getting good at going up and down 10km/h without thinking - which is 6 presses if I do think about it. Also love the kick in the pants you get... a nice reminder that when those rotors are spinning up above 3K RPM that there's plenty of go ready for you.

The cruise control is great for when you feel like speeding.

 

Having been made aware of this forum I thought I would post a bit of info as part of my first post - re fuel consumption - a recent trip by a Holden LS1 V8 owner revealed the following statistics:

"Stats for the trip, left Bega 3am, arrived tweed 5:30pm
9.7l/100 @ 94.8km/h (damn Sydney traffic dropped my average from 115) 13hrs 56 minutes driving time for 1322km total.

Left tweed at 6am (damn phone was on qld time, I wanted a 5am start) arrived Bega still 9.7l/100 and 92.6km/h average. 28hours 15 minutes total drive time, 2678km total...... geez thats a long way"

Car was a 2003 VY SS automatic

 

Did you enjoy the trip labrat...?

You did not talked about the Victorian Highway... what do you think. I don't like Sydney motorway as well... too many small town to tackle before Albury

 

Yes, we did enjoy the drive. The Hume from Wodonga is great, but they should do something about a complete link to the city bypass. Victorian roads are in the main much better than (particularly) NSW and probably also in Qld.

One small niggle was the speed limt on the narrow roads around the Mornington Peninsula wine routes - they are way too high. When you wanted to cruise around enjoying the scenery,and pottering in and out of wineries, there always seemed to be some local wanting to bore along these roads at the designated 100kph. I think that they should restrict speed in these designated tourist areas to say 70kph.

BTW, we're ex-Victorians (the last place we lived in was Mt Eliza 18 years ago), and it was the first time back for some years. Not sure whether everything's changed for the good... I think we've become Queenslanders.

 

Hey Mozz,

Geez - how many of you guys are coming over to "the dark side" as your estimed moderator LYTNING reffered to it one time?

Did you chime in so you could stir Richard into action?

Nice stats. That will make us RX-8 owners envious... until next time we drive round a corner :p (well slightly - still not quite as good as Labrats!)

I'd like to measure mine one a few full highway tankfulls when I go down to Wakefield in a months time.

Cheers,
Hymee.