1st big round-trip to the roof of the Alps

[brit-tic]

Hello,

Weather was nice today and after I changed the original alloy wheels with winter tyres against a set with summer tyres that came with the car when I bought it, the SVX was ready for the first "big run". First leg was from Geneva to Lucerne in the centre of Switzerland. All on highway and as nowbody was on the road (hopefully no speedcamera either) I set cruise control at approx 150 Km/h that is 3000rpm for most of the jurney. Observations: I is incredible how "long legs" this car has and the benefit is a very, very reasonable fuel consumption that I measured with 8.45 litres/100Kms (sorry, no clue what this is in MPG). Admittedly, Air con was not on as it was early morning and quite cool. 2nd leg was from Lucerne up the highway towards the Gotthard-Tunnel (thats were all the people from Northern Europe have to go through if they want to go to sunny Italy and last week there was a traffic jam of some 30(!) Kilometers, i.e. 6 hours of stop and go....) Not today and I left the highway anyway before the tunnel to cross the mountain pass called Furka. The peak is almost 2600 meters above see level (see pict, hopefully...and there is still snow) The SVX behaved bravely on this sometimes very rough road. It is remarkable how solid and rattlefree this car feels inspite of the 235/40/17 tyres. After all I read about the brakes, I felt a bit scared to come from 2600 meters down to the Valais that is 400 meters above see level. As there are hundereds narrow bends (see pict) I choose 2nd gear for all the way down and that went perfectly well. Back home I filled the tank and the avarage consumption on this leg was 9.56/100Km. This is still excellent for such a heavy and powerfull car and the Air con was on all the way back once I was down in the Valais as outside temperature was 32 celsuis as compared to 14 celsius on top of the mountain pass. What great cars we have...and nobody knows about. Really nothing to complain (?): well, as you do not hear the engine, nor wind noises, you hear other things: tyres, depending on surface are very loud (or the wheel bearings?) Anyway, I greatly enjoied this firs "day out", Cheers, brit-tic