15

Hopefully you will have a couple of photographs of Snowy in his retirement home in sunny Spain. He is a 1996 Mercedes E class Elegance, 2 litre petrol car. I bought him from a friend where he was surplus to requirements. The car had done a genuine 76k miles from new when I bought it. There were small bits of rust on the wheel arches and the bottom of the doors as well as the alloys, so I had the alloys refurbished, the rust cured and the car resprayed. It looks, as you can see, very well and should last forever now garaged in Spain. However it was not very economical and I have had a tunit fitted to my present car, and the one before that which is now my partner's and so I enquired some time ago and was told the car wasn't suitable. Anyway this year when I asked again, or saw a new advert, not quite sure, I was told that you could do a petrol car but hadn't done so yet. So I took the plunge and had one fitted. On the 10th November we drove to Portsmouth, took the ferry to Cherbourg and then drove through France and into Spain, then down to the Costa Blanca. The car behaved beautifully, and, although we never pushed it, I think I felt a small improvement in its acceleration. Having got to Spain we pottered about in the car for a couple of weeks before I did my fuel calculations as I didn't think it would be a fair reflection just to go off the long distance driving to get there. I had kept every one of my petrol receipts and kept a note of the mileage we had travelled overall, around 2,000 miles. The previous owner had told me that he could get around 32 mpg if taking it easy. In the short time I had the car I would have said that was fair. I can tell you now, quite honestly that my calculations showed that overall we achieved more or less 38 mpg. I was delighted. Of course we were in no hurry and the car was driven with respect, but even so I think that is an excellent improvement and that having the Tunit installed was well worth it. So I'm happy

T I P , Renault Espace 3.0 DCI