At the moment of writing we are spending our holiday as usual in a village in the French Massif Central, which is now luckily rather “Corona Safe” simply because it is not densely populated. This means of course that everybody has go remain very careful as even – as we have seen in the earlier stages of the pandemic – mountain villages can be hotspots spreading the disease.

As our holiday car to make the 1,000 km trip to the south we picked this time our faithful and oh so frugal Lexus CT200h, which just had its service done only a month before. Besides the usual checks and a filter and oil change nothing else was needed.

It proved a very comfortable trip in the true Lexus style, and with the drive mode selector in “ECO” and good use of the cruise control, we managed a fuel consumption of 4,3 litres/100 km over the trip, which equals some 54 miles per US Gallon or 65,6 miles (!) per Imperial gallon.

Digital airco and excellent sound deadening in combination with the good sound system made it a very enjoyable and relaxing affair.

In our holiday home we found back our Mercedes A Class and the VW New Beetle 1.4i, and last but not least our Suzuki Samurai, which we will endeavour this year’s holiday to register it as a “Voiture de Collection”.

At the moment of writing, we have used so far the compact Mercedes, so ideal for the necessary supermarket/grocery errands, and the New Beetle for the scenic mountain trips in the surroundings. Both cars fired up without any hesitation, and drive as smoothly as ever.

Whilst we took our Beetle on a very scenic route over Antraigues, Genestelle and Mézilhac, the right rear side window cable snapped, leaving the side rear window in half open position. This means for us getting a new cable set and doing the extensive repair, rather time consuming as the complete rear upholstery, seats and coverings have to come off.

A nice project to tackle next year, as we decide to use the car for our touristic trips this year anyway with the right rear side window half open. It is summer time and the car can be locked up safely also inside the cabin with glove box lock. As it is a convertible, access to the boot lid and fuel filler cap can be locked off too, by locking the commands in the driver’s door. It spends the rest of the year in a closed garage, so there is no problem there either….

The coming days we will start up the Samurai, and we will make also some nice (offroad) mountain tours with it. Stay tuned!

Hans Knol ten Bensel