The inner sybarite

The working week is over but on Monday I’ll have a new view from my office window. 

S’pose it’ll do.

True enough. First task is to get all the billions of options configured to my liking. In the demo car, I never really noticed the journos’-favourite Iconic Sounds. In this one, they’re mostly silent but for the occasional semi-musical whoomf as it takes off into a gap on a roundabout. Solo trip to Southampton in the morning, so I’ll have a play then and see if I like them. Maybe turn everything off and see if I miss it.

What’s certainly up to expectations is the blue fabric interior, which is just fabulous. I had a little committee of salesmen to see me off. They said it was the first like that they’d sold, which is a surprise after more than two years, but they were all over it. Pleased with the light headlining and plain glass too; just the combination I was looking for.

Too much traffic this evening to get real driving impressions. That — and my first go with the towbar and the bike carrier — can wait till tomorrow.

Not anticipating any problems with either. The dealer demonstrated the towbar yesterday (ironically, it’s one of the few controls that get a physical button, when it could quite reasonably be controlled from the panel) and it just pops out and locks by itself. The electrical socket is exposed on the side, so no need to crawl under the bumper for it.

And the bike rack is the Atera I’ve used for 15 years, so no worries there. Will be interesting to see the effect it has on efficiency. I always thought bikes affected the CLS more than the taller E220, and the iX is taller still, so may have a bigger aerodynamic shadow for the bikes to hide in.

Setting off soon. We'll see. It’s just occurred to me that I need to put the carrier keys on the new ring.

No, I did remember to strip the two Mercedes keys down to the minimum. I then just needed to make sure the keys I’d removed came with me to Southampton.

And the actual bike-carrying part of the day went very well, as did the rest of it really — although I rolled up a bit later than intended, expecting to find him fuming about the delay and instead finding he’d barely begun to pack and was still emptying kitchen cupboards. So I was there for five and a half hours, including a lunch break. But we got his stuff together.

Inevitably there were tellings-off. I’d not told him I’d be bringing the iX, so a bit of reaction was in order. It has ‘a V8 bonnet’, apparently, which I don’t think it does. And he’s not impressed by the carbon fibre arse-cheeks because they restrict the luggage width available: true but not really a problem. But he did look inside and call it ‘quite nice’, which is something, I suppose. It felt big in his narrow street, and required careful manoeuvring into his tiny driveway for loading — but the same was true of the CLS when I delivered him there last year.
110-mile round trip used just on half a battery. Uphill home and with bikes on the back, it reported 20 kWh per 100km for that leg, which seems presentable and may well improve as the car and I get used to each other.

Still much to comb through in the menu and switch off. There’s no automatic speed limiting but even the subtle bonging for minor speed limit infractions gets tedious. But the audio system is genuinely excellent, which is going to help a lot.

That's why I thought taking the car before the end of next week might actually be a good thing.

The speed limiter technology is another of those "with the best intent" but it's far from perfect and the usual "driver is ultimately responsible" statement means we will still get our money.

The positioning of signs outside the cameras field of view, behind lamp posts, too high up street lamps and other road furniture and overgrowth hiding signs means it will never be perfect. Linking to satnav helps, roadworks confuse that backup.

After four years with multiple updates I still don't trust it.

I had speed sign recognition via a camera on the Superb, 330e and now the Mazda6. I use the limiter fairly often on the 6 because it's easy to set to the current limit unless of course it's a 20mph now that used to be 30mph in Wales. So no repeater signs and the map data thinks it's 30mph. But set it to the current speed when below 20mph sets it to 20mph.

But a few times in the Superb or it might have been the 330e and when in a Tesco Extra car park it suddenly thought the limit was really high. Seem to think it was 110! And in the gym/hotel car park the 330e often thought it was 60 whereas there was no sign saying that and the nearest road was a 40 if it was snapping to that.... very odd.

So I wouldn't want the car limiting speed automatically. At least it's a limiter and not cruise control deciding you are in a new limit and changing the target speed!