Well, that was an interesting day.
The showroom we went to today we’d been to about 3 and a half years ago to check out the XC60. Since then its had a radical overhaul, and been made a good bit bigger with a full new workshop that is fully visible, and it also now has a handover bay. i.e, an enclosed visible bay in the building where customers collect their prepared new cars from.
The bay is bright and well light and is essentially an extension of the showroom, its a great facility.
There the customer is able to inspect the car and is given a full run through of the car’s functions before drive away. So on the customer service scale thats a good bit higher than “cheers, here’s your keys, see ya later”
We had gone to specifically view an R Design. As it happened a customer was collecting his brand new XC40 T4 R Design Pro today and it was sat in the handover bay as we arrived.
As he had been treated so well, the staff asked him if he minded us taking a good look at his car in the handover bay before he left.
He was a really great guy, recently retired, and had treated himself to the new car. He had loaded up the car with packs and instead of just standing back and allowing us a 5 minute look over it, he was such a nice bloke he willingly and enthusiastically spent about half an hour with us telling us all sorts about the car and the staff simply left us to it. He was also happy for me to sit in it to see how the cabin felt with the dark headlining and half nubuck seats. Very surprisingly I loved it.
So all very unexpected, but most welcome.
Getting up close to the XC40 again underlined that its not a small car. After seeing the Inscription yesterday we saw a 2006 X Trail on the road. We ran an 06 X Trail on the scheme for 3 years and I said to my wife “I bet the XC is a similar size to that you know” upon checking today, the old boxy XTrail was actually just over an inch longer than the XC, under an inch taller, but actually the XC is almost a foot wider than that 06 Xtrail.
Whilst in the showroom, the staff parked an XC40 Momentum next to our Santa Fe in the carpark. That was great as it enabled me to compare the two in close quarters. Yes the XC40 is smaller that the Santa Fe but not by that much. I was also able to see a similarity in the C pillar / window design across the two.
The XC40 is available in the very eye catching ‘bursting blue’ but that comes at a premium price.
Instead I had a curiosity to see the Fusion Red as I think it could be a colour that makes the black plastic around the base of the car look less obvious and be easier to maintain than black paintwork. The good thing is this showroom has very large colour sample tablets so I could get a real good look at it. Its a proper metallic red as opposed to an orangy red, I liked it and as we’ve not had a red car for many moons it could potentially be a good choice :
But then if full contrast appeals, the very bright Silver could also be worth considering :
For now Mrs Macca tells me its the motor she likes the most so far.
So we’re still in no panic yo change the car but we’ll see what happens to pricing in Q1, and perhaps try and get a test drive in an R Design Pro auto when there’s one available, and see what we make of it.
When we got back in the Santa Fe today, whilst we could happily keep on running it, it did suddenly feel dated inside.