GTI road trip

[MurphyTheElf]

I took my better half down to Margaret River in South West WA for the Xmas/NY holidays. Packed up some food, clothes and the dog and drove 300km or so to a nice big dog-friendly cottage - and invited a few friends to join us. Here are a few thoughts on the car:

RNS510
- navigation was useless in the country. the maps only had the main highways. no roads were shown even in the major tourist towns.

- dvd override: to view dvds while driving, insert the dvd, then wait for error message "function not available" to appear, then press "i" button followed by "tone" button. the timing has to be right for this to work. its not great though because its very easy to the screen to blank out again. for example, the volume cant be adjusted without the tone menu appearing and you can't get back to the viewing screen without ejecting the disk and the starting process again. kept the missus entertained on the 3 hour trip there and back, though.

gravel
- car handled very well. 80kmh on gravel was quite good on the comfort setting, but corrugations made it feel unsettled. deep corrugations were tooth-rattling so we had to slow right down to about 30kmh. i was paranoid about rock chips but i have none on the side panels despite a lack of mudflaps. i have one small paint chip on the front bumper - probably from oncoming traffic.

fuel economy
- 7.1l per 100km for the return trip. fair amount of traffic. i didn't check the average speed, but i sat on 120 for large chunks. a bit of foot-flat overtaking and heavy acceleration after stopping. the car is now nudging 4000km.

oil temp
- maxed out at 106 degrees for the return trip. outside temp was between 34 and 37 degrees.

luggage room
- we carried a large aluminium eksy, two suitcases and a dog. we folded down the rear seats, put the esky on the back of the seats longways, then shoved the suitcases on their sides via each rear door. prefect fit. the dog then had the entire boot space - we have the golf boot tub, which is just brilliant for him. he's a big male boxer, but had plenty of room. a couple of other items were shoved in the rear passenger footwells.

rear seats
- we did a few day trips with another couple and their 4 year old. the toddler seat took up a lot of room, but the isofix child restraints are in a better place than their 3 series wagon so we actually had more room. since the child seat took up the left hand rear seat, two males just under 6 foot were in the middle and right hand rear seat. we fit, but couldn't both sit back at the same time because of our shoulders. two adults plus a child in the middle could be done comforably - even a small adult might be ok for short trips.

performance
- overtaking and acceleration even with a loaded car was an absolute cinch.

That's all I can think of for now. I might add to this if anything comes to mind. Any questions or feedback is welcome!

[Nath]

They are much roomier than they look arent they. Went out to Ikea today with the wife and our 2 y.o son, in his car seat. On the way back folded one half of the rear seat down and loaded it with Ikea crap, plenty of room, and the fact that the car seat was in the back had no impact on the split. Was pretty impressed actually.

I don't have ACC so cant comment on it, but I know from time to time driving on the crappy sydney roads I get a bit rattled and have to slow down too, pain but we can only dream of those european roads....

[scurup]

I took my better half down to Margaret River in South West WA for the Xmas/NY holidays. Packed up some food, clothes and the dog and drove 300km or so to a nice big dog-friendly cottage - and invited a few friends to join us. Here are a few thoughts on the car:

RNS510
- navigation was useless in the country. the maps only had the main highways. no roads were shown even in the major tourist towns.

- dvd override: to view dvds while driving, insert the dvd, then wait for error message "function not available" to appear, then press "i" button followed by "tone" button. the timing has to be right for this to work. its not great though because its very easy to the screen to blank out again. for example, the volume cant be adjusted without the tone menu appearing and you can't get back to the viewing screen without ejecting the disk and the starting process again. kept the missus entertained on the 3 hour trip there and back, though.

gravel
- car handled very well. 80kmh on gravel was quite good on the comfort setting, but corrugations made it feel unsettled. deep corrugations were tooth-rattling so we had to slow right down to about 30kmh. i was paranoid about rock chips but i have none on the side panels despite a lack of mudflaps. i have one small paint chip on the front bumper - probably from oncoming traffic.

fuel economy
- 7.1l per 100km for the return trip. fair amount of traffic. i didn't check the average speed, but i sat on 120 for large chunks. a bit of foot-flat overtaking and heavy acceleration after stopping. the car is now nudging 4000km.

oil temp
- maxed out at 106 degrees for the return trip. outside temp was between 34 and 37 degrees.

luggage room
- we carried a large aluminium eksy, two suitcases and a dog. we folded down the rear seats, put the esky on the back of the seats longways, then shoved the suitcases on their sides via each rear door. prefect fit. the dog then had the entire boot space - we have the golf boot tub, which is just brilliant for him. he's a big male boxer, but had plenty of room. a couple of other items were shoved in the rear passenger footwells.

rear seats
- we did a few day trips with another couple and their 4 year old. the toddler seat took up a lot of room, but the isofix child restraints are in a better place than their 3 series wagon so we actually had more room. since the child seat took up the left hand rear seat, two males just under 6 foot were in the middle and right hand rear seat. we fit, but couldn't both sit back at the same time because of our shoulders. two adults plus a child in the middle could be done comforably - even a small adult might be ok for short trips.

performance
- overtaking and acceleration even with a loaded car was an absolute cinch.

That's all I can think of for now. I might add to this if anything comes to mind. Any questions or feedback is welcome!

Sat nav no good? I'm thinking of purchasing it with my gti, I hope its better than my Tom Tom

[Coaster]

Nice work, good reporting. Going down south in a nice car is sheer joy Any chance you went along Balingup-Nannup Road? One of the best driving roads in the state.
The RNS510 is a bit of a disappointment in that aspect.
The trick to corrugated roads: the faster you drive, the smoother the ride. Although probably not too safe

[MurphyTheElf]

Nice work, good reporting. Going down south in a nice car is sheer joy Any chance you went along Balingup-Nannup Road? One of the best driving roads in the state.
The RNS510 is a bit of a disappointment in that aspect.
The trick to corrugated roads: the faster you drive, the smoother the ride. Although probably not too safe

We did the boring but quick Perth-to-Bunbury freeway. An utter joy compared with the drudgery of skulking through Mandurah.

Hopefully some updated maps are available for the RNS510. It's great around the city, but I'm planning on doing many more trips around the state. I don't want to have to rely on my iPhone - defeats the purpose.

I realise corrugations tend to "smooth out" when you pick up the pace. But if the heard the awful noise the gravel was making on my shiny new baby, you'd probably drive like Miss Daisy as well. It took all my willpower to get above 10kmh.

[elisiX]

Thanks for the small write up Murphy. This should certainly provide some insight to those looking at purchasing a MK6, particularly the GTI.

Sounds like it was a nice little trip all around and the car coped quite well.

[Lima]

Interesting feedback on the nav, a bit disappointing and I wonder if its a case of the mapping company neglecting the West?

I haven't noticed any dramas with the nav in the S3, which, presumably, uses the same/similar maps, but I've not strayed too far off main roads to date. Although I hope to do a Snowys run soon, so will be interesting to see how it goes out there.

Don't think you can really expect a GTI to be too comfortable on rough corrugations, but you won't be driving these road every day so probably too much of a concern.

Great that you're putting some kms on the car though!

[Corey_R]

Hmm - I sometimes forget that MurphyTheElf is from WA. I must say that with my 08 GTI (which actually had the previous DVD sat nav) I thought the maps were great. I'm from Sydney, but I drove the car to the Gold Coast and Brisbane, had to detour through Casino and a few other country towns due to the Pacific Hwy being closed, never had an issue with that. Nor the back streets of the towns in The Blue Mountains or Wollongong etc.

[elisiX]

Good to know the Sydney/Outer Sydney maps will be fine then.

I dont think i'd ever be taking the car interstate.