Quote:
Originally Posted by slick
most decent dealers allow the cars to warm up to temp before allowing joe public to thrash them.
and most decent drivers will let their cars warm up before taking it over 3000 rpm if your petrol or 2000 rpm if your diesel.
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Perhaps decent dealers will do that, but in that case, I'm yet to come across any. A quick count of garages I've been on unaccompanied test drives on (aged 21-24) is about 10-12. None of which have warmed up the car before me taking it out, and all of which have just given me the keys and told me to come back when I'm ready or before the car runs out of fuel.
That's the best way to test drive a car - you get a proper look around the car, and good poke about at the interior to make sure bits won't fall off, and you'll see how the engine performs and how the car handles. I normally take cars out for 30-45 minutes - mixture of town and A road driving, generally finding out exactly how good the handling is and how well it goes.
Funnily enough, at one garage I looked at a performance hatchback, the salesperson came with me for "insurance reasons". He actually encouraged me to redline their demo car (not warmed up). During that test drive he was more than happy for me to find out how the car behaved on the limit over some NSL back roads. 5,000 demo miles and a new set of front tyres later, that car was up for sale with a whopping £1,000 saving over retail. No thanks.
