sofa on wheels (Rover 75)

Name: superguinness

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Product:	Rover 75
Date:	20/09/00 (1704 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: comfort

Disadvantages: poor handling and fuel economy

A few months ago rover dealerships were offering the crazy deal of a 24 hour road test with unlimited mileage. All I had to do was arrange temporary comprehensive insurance through my broker, which surprisingly didn't cost anything extra. So armed with my temporary cover note and my driving licence I marched into the showroom one Friday morning to claim my prize. Yep, they hadn't been joking, 'here's the car', they said, 'its brimming with petrol - go play with it'(or words to that effect). Well it would have been rude not to, surely....

I had arranged the test drive to coincide with a trip (from Sheffield) to St. Albans and back in a day. So I reckoned that I would get a good idea of how the car was overall.

Initially driving around in Sheffield, which is full of hills and pot-holed roads I wasn't impressed. The car is definately on the very heavy side of heavy and you really had to floor the accelerator to gain altitude. This was the 2 litre version, so I reckoned that the 1.8 would really have struggled.

On the plus side however I have to report that the interior is beutifully finished. I'd managed to blag the Connoisseur SE (Hi-Line Nav) model which seems to retail at about £30,555, with all the extra bits that had been attached to it. Luckily I was blissfully unaware of this price tag at the time. The best gizzmo was without doubt the satellite navigation system - truely awesome to be able to see yourself as a moving dot on a screen map, as you whizz down the M1.

Indeed the motorway is where this car is meant to be - once it has put up all it's sails, it breazes along quite happily. However quick bursts of acceleration are indicated on the fuel gauge as well as on the speedometer.

Well a quick turn round in St. Albans and back up the motorway. It was dark by now and the cars interior dashboard lights did look very classy. At one point on the M1 when we all ground to a halt I to
ok the opportunity to switch from the sat nav to TV, but reception was a bit dodgy (somewhere in Leicestershire I think). Later, as I drew up outside my house the sat nav confirmed that "you have arrived". Well not really, but it was nice pretending for a day...

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