I have recently got a V2 190 in Mag Tech Grey (73 plate 10 months old with 3000 miles showing for £29k).
I have changed from a BMW 320d M-Sport Coupe. She'd done me well at 13 years old (11 years ownership for me) and 130,000 miles.
The reason for changing was the age / mileage of my old car and the lack of ground clearance / hard ride coupled with standard of roads over the last 5 years.
I loved the car, but it was a chore and stressful to drive as bumps, uneven roads, potholes etc. had to be scanned for in Terminator style.
Any road issues like the above led to heavy braking to avoid scrapping the underside of the splitter, which caused annoyance to me and anyone following.
I first saw a Formentor when looking for a car for my sister. I had no idea what it was, but my word it looked fabulous. I just had to ask the dealer what it was.
I test drove the 150 and the 310. The former was OK, but needed to be thrashed a bit to get decent performance. The latter was a rocket ship, but £600 tax and 20mpg and high insurance meant it wasn't for me. So it was the 190. However, that engine choice is rare and finding a good used one would be a challenge.
I spent ages trying to find the right one. I wanted V2 in mag tech grey. I saw a couple and they weren't right for me. One was at Reading (I live in Lincolnshire). Having asked questions about condition it seemed to be the one. I got the train down and when I got there, I was very dissapointed. It still have stuff from the previous owner left in it, it had scrapes under the front splitter and grass / soil trapped in the under trays. So it had obviously had an off-road excursion or had be neglected. The saleswoman wouldn't even get down to look under the car when I pointed it out. They also refused to sort the issues as "they were not in plain sight". The sales manager wouldn't even come out of their office to discuss it. Even when another customer was screaming blue murder about issues a car he was picking up had, the manager would not show their face. Odd way to sell cars. So I thanked them for a wasted journey and went home. Anyway I found one just before Christmas at Marshall's Leicester. They couldn't have been more helpful. There's had a small scrape under the bumper, which they had painted for me FOC. So the deal was done. My old girl went to motorway at a decent price (twice what part-ex was offered).
First impressions are good. I like the car and love how it looks. I'm a software engineer, and I work on human machine interfaces (sort industrial infotainment / digital dash), so the screen stuff is second nature to me. However, I do miss the physical buttons for heater controls. That said, I hardly every change the temperature, so it is only a slight gripe.
The ride is better than the beamer, and no more worries about grounding out as I've gone for 3 inches of ground clearance to 6. So much more relaxing to drive. The handling is good, but not up to the beamer's standard, but that is to be expected as they are totally different cars. The boot is slightly smaller width wise as my cue case won't fit, so it has to go through the ski hatch. I'm loving all the gadgets and I have left most on as they don't interfere with the driving experience IMHO. Performance is better from standstill and through the gears, but it can't match the beamers 40-80 mph mid-range stonk, but that is petrol vs diesel. The beamer is also slightly more posh inside. The glovebox and side bins were carpet lined for example, whereas they are bare plastic in the Formentor. The rear door cards are plastic whereas they were leather in the beamer. However, a similar spec / age / mileage X4 would have been £45k, so there is why. It doesn't have an electric tailgate, but I never had that on the beamer, so I don't really miss it. It has heated seats and steering wheel, which my beamer didn't, which are very nice. The passenger seat being manual (beamer was electric) isn't really an issue either as I very rarely have passengers.
It is currently returning high 30's mpg, which is far better than I was expecting after 30 years of driving diesels, and with my last petrol car being 35 years ago. Petrol engines have come on leaps and bounds since then. I'm very impressed.
Now to the questions.
1. Offroad mode. What does this actually do? The manual (which is another gripe as it is not good) does not explain this or other stuff too well. I'm used to reading translated technical documentation (usually German to English), and this manual seems to have suffered from the same "lost in traslation" issue.
2. Why does the screen randomly change by itself to the android auto screen? I prefer the tiles, but is often just changes by itself to the android auto screen. Apart from that the infotainment system seems to be responsive and not laggy as some had reported. It is also quite quick to boot and certainly caomparable to the beamer.
3. I saw somewhere (but can't find it now) where someone had lined the glovebox with some carpet. Anyone else tried this? This is something that I'd like to do as stuff in the glovebox rattles when driving.
4. I bought a connection cable for my S10 so I could use "full link". However, when connected despite full link apparently working, I can't see any difference. Again Full Link is not explained particularly well in the manual.
5. Should I buy a space saver? The beamer was runflats. I'm not too keen on the slime stuff as it makes such a mess of the alloys I have been told.
6. Does the 2.0L have ACT, whereby it turns off 2 cyclinders during periods of low power demands? I know the 1.5 does.
7. Why do I keep getting the "mobile device is being charged" message whilst wireless charging? I would like to tell me that it is charging when it first starts, but I don't need to be reminded about it every 5 minutes. Could it be phone settings? I currently have battery protected enabled that ceases charge at 85%. Maybe when it drops below 85% it starts charging again. However, it would do that even if it was left to charge to 100%?
8. Not sure if mine has blind spot monitoring. How can you tell?
Dave.
I have changed from a BMW 320d M-Sport Coupe. She'd done me well at 13 years old (11 years ownership for me) and 130,000 miles.
The reason for changing was the age / mileage of my old car and the lack of ground clearance / hard ride coupled with standard of roads over the last 5 years.
I loved the car, but it was a chore and stressful to drive as bumps, uneven roads, potholes etc. had to be scanned for in Terminator style.
Any road issues like the above led to heavy braking to avoid scrapping the underside of the splitter, which caused annoyance to me and anyone following.
I first saw a Formentor when looking for a car for my sister. I had no idea what it was, but my word it looked fabulous. I just had to ask the dealer what it was.
I test drove the 150 and the 310. The former was OK, but needed to be thrashed a bit to get decent performance. The latter was a rocket ship, but £600 tax and 20mpg and high insurance meant it wasn't for me. So it was the 190. However, that engine choice is rare and finding a good used one would be a challenge.
I spent ages trying to find the right one. I wanted V2 in mag tech grey. I saw a couple and they weren't right for me. One was at Reading (I live in Lincolnshire). Having asked questions about condition it seemed to be the one. I got the train down and when I got there, I was very dissapointed. It still have stuff from the previous owner left in it, it had scrapes under the front splitter and grass / soil trapped in the under trays. So it had obviously had an off-road excursion or had be neglected. The saleswoman wouldn't even get down to look under the car when I pointed it out. They also refused to sort the issues as "they were not in plain sight". The sales manager wouldn't even come out of their office to discuss it. Even when another customer was screaming blue murder about issues a car he was picking up had, the manager would not show their face. Odd way to sell cars. So I thanked them for a wasted journey and went home. Anyway I found one just before Christmas at Marshall's Leicester. They couldn't have been more helpful. There's had a small scrape under the bumper, which they had painted for me FOC. So the deal was done. My old girl went to motorway at a decent price (twice what part-ex was offered).
First impressions are good. I like the car and love how it looks. I'm a software engineer, and I work on human machine interfaces (sort industrial infotainment / digital dash), so the screen stuff is second nature to me. However, I do miss the physical buttons for heater controls. That said, I hardly every change the temperature, so it is only a slight gripe.
The ride is better than the beamer, and no more worries about grounding out as I've gone for 3 inches of ground clearance to 6. So much more relaxing to drive. The handling is good, but not up to the beamer's standard, but that is to be expected as they are totally different cars. The boot is slightly smaller width wise as my cue case won't fit, so it has to go through the ski hatch. I'm loving all the gadgets and I have left most on as they don't interfere with the driving experience IMHO. Performance is better from standstill and through the gears, but it can't match the beamers 40-80 mph mid-range stonk, but that is petrol vs diesel. The beamer is also slightly more posh inside. The glovebox and side bins were carpet lined for example, whereas they are bare plastic in the Formentor. The rear door cards are plastic whereas they were leather in the beamer. However, a similar spec / age / mileage X4 would have been £45k, so there is why. It doesn't have an electric tailgate, but I never had that on the beamer, so I don't really miss it. It has heated seats and steering wheel, which my beamer didn't, which are very nice. The passenger seat being manual (beamer was electric) isn't really an issue either as I very rarely have passengers.
It is currently returning high 30's mpg, which is far better than I was expecting after 30 years of driving diesels, and with my last petrol car being 35 years ago. Petrol engines have come on leaps and bounds since then. I'm very impressed.
Now to the questions.
1. Offroad mode. What does this actually do? The manual (which is another gripe as it is not good) does not explain this or other stuff too well. I'm used to reading translated technical documentation (usually German to English), and this manual seems to have suffered from the same "lost in traslation" issue.
2. Why does the screen randomly change by itself to the android auto screen? I prefer the tiles, but is often just changes by itself to the android auto screen. Apart from that the infotainment system seems to be responsive and not laggy as some had reported. It is also quite quick to boot and certainly caomparable to the beamer.
3. I saw somewhere (but can't find it now) where someone had lined the glovebox with some carpet. Anyone else tried this? This is something that I'd like to do as stuff in the glovebox rattles when driving.
4. I bought a connection cable for my S10 so I could use "full link". However, when connected despite full link apparently working, I can't see any difference. Again Full Link is not explained particularly well in the manual.
5. Should I buy a space saver? The beamer was runflats. I'm not too keen on the slime stuff as it makes such a mess of the alloys I have been told.
6. Does the 2.0L have ACT, whereby it turns off 2 cyclinders during periods of low power demands? I know the 1.5 does.
7. Why do I keep getting the "mobile device is being charged" message whilst wireless charging? I would like to tell me that it is charging when it first starts, but I don't need to be reminded about it every 5 minutes. Could it be phone settings? I currently have battery protected enabled that ceases charge at 85%. Maybe when it drops below 85% it starts charging again. However, it would do that even if it was left to charge to 100%?
8. Not sure if mine has blind spot monitoring. How can you tell?
Dave.
