After some consideration and much research, we took a trip last weekend up to Dubbo again - this time with just one purpose.
Despite knowing that we can live without it, we decided to get ourselves a second car. I looked around at many options and narrowed down various criteria until I found what we really wanted - a Peugeot 406 diesel wagon. Being French, and having enough room to lug your house around with you, it was promptly named esCarGo(t). Being bigger, slower and older than Albert the
VW Polo diesel we already have and love, the dual-purpose name for
snail is quite appropriate too!
The thing is crazily efficient for such a spacious, luxurious car - despite having 7 seats, auto wipers and lights, wood-grain trim, computer, four airbags, etc... - after the 460km drive home from Dubbo the computer still says it's got 1100km to go before it needs fuel again!
In fact the HDi engine in this thing is
rather impressive:
"You may recall a Peugeot 406 Diesel set a world record in 2002, driven by John who is a multiple fuel economy world record holder, when it travelled from Melbourne to Rockhampton on a single tank of fuel. The car covered a staggering 2348 km's in real day-to-day driving condtitions on less than 70 litres of Diesel."
I'll do the maths for you - that's 2.98 L/100km.
Ours is a little bigger than that one, but has the same engine. And room for so much baby stuff that we're planning road-trip North next month - one of the reasons behind the purchase.