I find myself oddly in Thunder Bay, Ontario, today - a 14.5 hour drive from Toronto - for a short 8 hour stay. It's a trip for work, so naturally I get the Royal treatment. Nah, not royal, Regal, actually.
After my lovely flight on Porter, albeit delayed by 40 minutes, I landed in the quaint airport and walked leisurely to the enterprise counter where I had a compact car on reserve for the day.
"Sir, since you are wearing a suit, I cannot give you a compact car. I can offer you a free upgrade to a Buick Verano. No, wait, we have a Regal Turbo with 368km on it."
Sweet! SirO, this one's for you, kid!
Initial impressions:
1) the car failed to start. Twice. Third time was, indeed, a charm, and I could barely hear anything. Buick's promise of a quiet ride is not feigned.
2) materials seemed right - not the most luxurious car out there, but for the most part, there was an imbued sense of premium.
3) trunk size was just adequate for such a large car, interior space was good, and outward visibility was OK, but certainly not great.
I drove to pick up some clients, and since I had to drive responsibly, and since I have no idea where I am going here (not equipped with navi unless on Star would provide it - I wasn't able to call it in), I drove rather sedately. All in the city +albeit thunder bay city traffic (?), I averaged 10.6L/100km.
Since I dropped the clients off, time to hoon!
I found out that the car is not the AWD variant by virtue of the wheel spin during a sudden acceleration movement. Not bad - good enough since the roads here are bare and dry and it's 5'C. The Michelin Primacy tires seeming to give up traction perhaps too easily, but it is winter-ish. Interesting since they may be the next tires on the Corolla in the spring.
The heated seats and auto climate control work well, but the touch-sensitive buttons are completely unresponsive... Shame. The mylink interface is easy and good enough, with Bluetooth pairing simply in seconds... But no Google maps audio played through. Checked media volume, etc - apparently you need an Apple device for that to work. BOO TO PROPRIETARY!!!
I'm now at the Hoito - a Finnish pancake place. Tasty. I also got a Karjalan Piirakka pie. It's weird and kinda tastes like KD, but very interesting!
Fuel economy with hooning so far is at 10.7L/100km. Instantaneous readouts on 70km/h roads are in the high 4s/low 5s. Power delivery is good, but not as strong as the power ratings would suggest. I quite like the car, actually.
Ok, enough, going to finish my Finnish pancakes.
