Hey guys, I'm just over a month in on my GranTurismo Sport so throwing some thoughts down for anyone thinking about picking up one of the last new ones dealers still have.
I bought mine from HR Owen in Kensington and had an excellent experience with the dealer (unlike the lack of responsiveness I had from Maranello's in Egham). They also gave 12.5k off list price.
I had wanted a GT for quite a while but was originally planning on buying one this year. It fit the bill for me in basically every way. Looked good, 2 door exotic Italian, relatively quick and still able to seat 4 in reasonable comfort (I still have kids living at home).
I had several concerns about reliability after having quite a few problems with an Alfa I had from new in 2010, but after the family BMW (also bought from new in 2012) needed over 3k's worth of work the first year out of its warranty, including a new turbo, exhaust section replacement and wiper jets going, as well as having lots of other problems over the years with other German marques, decided that German engineering is a bit of a myth so may as well get something that looks better and is more fun.
The car:
GranTurismo Sport MC Auto Shift in Blu Mediterraneo with Nero interior and Blu Sofisticato stitching.
Trident logo on headrests
Carbon fibre dash trim and gearknob
Carbon fibre steering wheel
Bose stereo
Comfort pack front seats (heating, driver seat memory, power steering column, easy exit/entry)
ipod interface
Black side skirts
Brake calipers in anodised blue
20" matt graphite MC design alloy wheels
Aerodynamic package in carbon fibre (front splitter, rear lip spoiler, door mirrors and handles)
MC design aluminium pedals
In addition to this I also took out the SMART small scratch/chips insurance as well as the alloy wheel and tyre insurance, plus GAP and Glasscoat paint protection.
Good points:
Bad points
Stuff to be aware of
So in just over a month, I've put a little over 700 miles on the car. That included a reasonable amount of driving for the sake of it to get over the first 620 miles so that I could properly unleash the engine, as well as a day jaunt with the family up to Bicester Village (couple of hours each way). I've since hit the rev limiter (once) which felt to me like it engaged at 7,500rpm although that is where it goes yellow on the dial and turns red at 8k. Regardless, the car was ridiculously quick and it was difficult to see since as soon as I hit it I pulled the paddle to shift up.
Stereo system issues
Let's get the biggest problem out of the way. Getting digital music onto the car's hard drive is a painful process. Realistically though it's mostly a one and done (ish) scenario. My car has a full USB slot in the glovebox (apparently some only have a charging USB slot). Copied a bunch of mp3s onto a usb drive and plugged it in, car didn't recognise it. A bit of digging around and a forum post somewhere mentioned fat32, so I formatted the USB in fat32 and recopied the mp3s onto it. Now the car recognises, hooray! The system scans the USB when you plug it in then after a few seconds registers and you can select it as a source. Via some menu options, you can copy the entire USB, great! I just put about 1000 songs on it to get things going.
Next problem, the car copies 250 songs then stops. Try to copy it again, same result, the same 250 songs. Wondered if the issue was folders so put everything in the root of the USB and copied again, same issue. Verified the songs it copied and it took alphabetical order, first 250 files. Ok, so deleted the first 250 files from the USB, put it in again and it copied the next 250. Ok, so we have some weird kind of 250 song limit in copying. Then realise that it takes each batch and puts them into one "album" on the hard drive. Slightly ridiculous that it doesn't take the mp3 tags for artist/album etc to organise the music a bit more effectively but the infotainment world has obviously moved on quite a lot in the 10 years since the car has launched. The user manual is also relatively useless when it comes to navigating these limitations and it's a trial and error scenario.
4 copies later and I have 4 "albums" of 250 songs on the hard drive. Next step, playlists! The car has 4 empty playlists, I navigate to the first folder of 250 songs and start selecting a bunch of songs I want, then the next folder and the one after that. I then get a sneaky suspicion that perhaps there is a limitation on the number of songs per playlist so don't go through the final folder but try to save the playlist. I was right, too many songs. Documentation on the limitation number? Dream on. So I start again and just select a bunch of songs from album folder 1. The playlist saves fine, I then go to the 2nd album folder and add a bunch more songs, saves fine again. At that point I think I'm up to about 70 or 80 songs so decide to just start a 2nd playlist for the songs from the next 2 folders. This works fine.
The sound out of the system isn't bad, but at the same time it's not great. These are medium quality mp3's (192kbps) but they definitely sound better on a decent pair of headphones/earphones or my soundbar at home. CD sound quality is also similar, not bad, not amazing.
Now that the system is broadly setup with 2 playlists of a whole lot of my favourite songs, it's kind of fine. Could I rename song albums using the dial control etc? There are file modification settings but in all honestly I have no desire to spend the next X years doing this.
The car
The bad stuff out of the way, the car itself is amazing. As mentioned above, the dealer told me that ordinary unleaded is fine for the car and I assume that's what they had used. Certainly the car doesn't have any major issues I could find with it but as mentioned, the idle was fairly rough on this. Having read through all the manuals etc, they are quite explicit to use 98 octane or above, so now I'm on Shell V-Power Nitro+ (99 octane according to Shell) and the rough idle is gone.
I'm somewhat amazed that I haven't had any electrical problems. True, the car is only just over a month old. I've been driving it fairly regularly and generally try to drive it so that it's properly warmed up at least twice a week to hopefully get the battery charging reasonably but I've experienced no issues. The main problem I have is Sport mode. The issue being that I typically want the exhaust in Sport mode all the time (it sounds glorious) but the car stiffens up and it's noticeable. Obviously UK roads aren't the best in the world, Sport isn't uncomfortable as such but road imperfections are definitely quite a bit more noticeable in Sport mode. It would have been nice if they could have had a separate option to put the exhaust in sport vs the suspension/damping.
I drive a reasonable amount in a mix of in town, dual carriageway and country A/B roads and in general I can safely say that I've yet to find a road that the car doesn't attack with aplomb. My one hesitation would be that around where I live there are some single track roads with passing points, as well as some other roads which aren't single track but feel somewhat narrow. The curve of the front bonnet which starts higher over the wheels before lowering down over the centre means that the intuitive sense in some cases is that the car is over the centre of the road which can obviously be quite nerve-wracking with a big car or lorry coming the other way. A quick check in the side mirrors does show that you're actually ok. The other useful thing is of course the folding mirrors. Unlike some cars where these can't be closed if above certain speeds etc, a twist of the dial in the GTS means that these aren't really a problem.
Gear changes in the auto box are good and in normal drive mode, have to agree with some reviews that the auto box suits the nature of the car well. My wife didn't want to drive it at first but when I finally convinced her to give it a try just leaving it in drive and not worrying about paddles or sport etc, she soon settled into it. It very much feels like a car I can use as my daily driver and just stick it in drive when I need to go to the shops. Although it's quite a big car dimension wise, when driving, unless on small roads it really doesn't feel it. Interior space is good, even for someone my size and I don't feel cramped like I do in 911's. The seats are supportive and hold you in place when throwing it into a corner but are still very comfortable and the drive up to Bicester and back with 4 hours behind the wheel in a day was no problem at all.
When you're not at full chat, in sport mode there is a sweet spot when you have the throttle slightly pressed at about 2,300 - 2,700 rpm where the exhaust note is pure heaven. As such I find myself in manual, sport and often trying to hit this sweet spot which has obviously not done wonders for my fuel economy. I'm currently averaging about 14.5mpg. The drive up to Bicester with cruise control on saw me up to the high teens but that's since fallen away again.
Parking sensors are a must have in a car this size and it's relatively easy to manoeuvre given its size, but I do find that the parking sensors feel a little oversensitive to me. I'm used to parking a car, waiting for the beeps to go solid, keeping going another few inches and then stopping. In the GTS, this still leaves me with a bit much room to spare and given the size of the car, I get back in and pull it in a bit further. Not the end of the world, just something to be aware of that needs attuning to.
The doors for the car are quite long though so you need a decent amount of space to the car next to you to get in and out with ease, but if you can get the doors open wide enough, despite being low, I never feel like I have to excessively contort myself to get in and out of the car.
Insurance, HR Owen had their specialist team try to get me some pricing but they were dealing with the private client high end teams of insurers with lots of "extras" included. I really didn't want that and the prices were completely noncompetitive. In the end I added it onto my existing Aviva multi-car insurance. Had to go through to a specialist team who wanted to know about garage and cctv and tracker and how far from the main road it would be kept etc but in the end they insured it for an extra £200/year on top of the BMW costs but with a much higher excess (£1500). My policy is up for renewal in a few months so will shop around in advance of that.
If anyone wants to ask anything that I've not covered here, please ask and I'll do my best to answer. All in all, I'm in awe of the car, yes the infotainment system/graphics on satnav etc are dated and a bit frustrating to deal with but in general I'd say that's all overcome by the epicness of the car.
Edit: I've had my first claim under SMART protection, the car was parked in town and someone must have walked past and swung a coat or a bag next to the car as a fairly long vertical but very light scratch on the rear left quarter panel. Extremely good job, the scratch is now invisible. Very knowledgeable chap who used to work at McLaren and was extremely enthusiastic about the car. So SMART was one of the best decisions I think I made. I want to drive the car and not get ridiculously upset when stone chips/small scratches happen and that's exactly what I felt. Reported the claim and sent in photos yesterday, claim approved in an hour or so and guy came out this morning.
I bought mine from HR Owen in Kensington and had an excellent experience with the dealer (unlike the lack of responsiveness I had from Maranello's in Egham). They also gave 12.5k off list price.
I had wanted a GT for quite a while but was originally planning on buying one this year. It fit the bill for me in basically every way. Looked good, 2 door exotic Italian, relatively quick and still able to seat 4 in reasonable comfort (I still have kids living at home).
I had several concerns about reliability after having quite a few problems with an Alfa I had from new in 2010, but after the family BMW (also bought from new in 2012) needed over 3k's worth of work the first year out of its warranty, including a new turbo, exhaust section replacement and wiper jets going, as well as having lots of other problems over the years with other German marques, decided that German engineering is a bit of a myth so may as well get something that looks better and is more fun.
The car:
GranTurismo Sport MC Auto Shift in Blu Mediterraneo with Nero interior and Blu Sofisticato stitching.
Trident logo on headrests
Carbon fibre dash trim and gearknob
Carbon fibre steering wheel
Bose stereo
Comfort pack front seats (heating, driver seat memory, power steering column, easy exit/entry)
ipod interface
Black side skirts
Brake calipers in anodised blue
20" matt graphite MC design alloy wheels
Aerodynamic package in carbon fibre (front splitter, rear lip spoiler, door mirrors and handles)
MC design aluminium pedals
In addition to this I also took out the SMART small scratch/chips insurance as well as the alloy wheel and tyre insurance, plus GAP and Glasscoat paint protection.
Good points:
- Engine is epic.
- Sport mode makes exhaust note even more amazing
- Italian leather smells beautifully luxurious
- Car inspires confidence in handling
- Very comfortable even over potholes etc in normal drive mode
- Lots of admiring glances and thumbs ups
- Despite being low, drives over normal speed bumps with no touching/scraping
- Boot space reasonable for a car of this kind
- Back seats with reasonable comfort and some actual space for legs, even behind me (I'm 6'3)
- Paddle shift feel is very good
- Tunnels. Find every single tunnel you can, drop the windows, put it in manual, sport mode and rev that baby. Try not to drool too much while doing
Bad points
- Sport mode isn't so comfortable over potholes
- Bose stereo is mediocre
- Back seats certainly usable but older kid (12) still prefers the other car for longer drives
- Infotainment system is quite dated and somewhat slow
- Copying music to the internal hard drive is a pain
- Although the rear seats are reasonable, booster seat (youngest is 7) doesn't sit too well given the significant side bolstering in the rear seats
Stuff to be aware of
- Dealer told me to use normal unleaded but it idled rough on this and manual says use premium which got rid of rough idle
- Dealer told me engine is already run in but manual says to run it in for first 620 miles (1k km)
- The car is quite wide and feels it at times too. Be careful of country lanes
- Pedals somewhat close together for a size 12 foot. Not a major problem but a couple of times I've caught the other pedal
- Seats very comfortable for a 16.5 stone 6'3 guy, could do with being able to move the seat back an additional 0.5 - 1 inch though
- Carbon fibre steering wheel is very cold on cold mornings!
- Limited space in glovebox
- Parking sensors feel a bit oversensitive
So in just over a month, I've put a little over 700 miles on the car. That included a reasonable amount of driving for the sake of it to get over the first 620 miles so that I could properly unleash the engine, as well as a day jaunt with the family up to Bicester Village (couple of hours each way). I've since hit the rev limiter (once) which felt to me like it engaged at 7,500rpm although that is where it goes yellow on the dial and turns red at 8k. Regardless, the car was ridiculously quick and it was difficult to see since as soon as I hit it I pulled the paddle to shift up.
Stereo system issues
Let's get the biggest problem out of the way. Getting digital music onto the car's hard drive is a painful process. Realistically though it's mostly a one and done (ish) scenario. My car has a full USB slot in the glovebox (apparently some only have a charging USB slot). Copied a bunch of mp3s onto a usb drive and plugged it in, car didn't recognise it. A bit of digging around and a forum post somewhere mentioned fat32, so I formatted the USB in fat32 and recopied the mp3s onto it. Now the car recognises, hooray! The system scans the USB when you plug it in then after a few seconds registers and you can select it as a source. Via some menu options, you can copy the entire USB, great! I just put about 1000 songs on it to get things going.
Next problem, the car copies 250 songs then stops. Try to copy it again, same result, the same 250 songs. Wondered if the issue was folders so put everything in the root of the USB and copied again, same issue. Verified the songs it copied and it took alphabetical order, first 250 files. Ok, so deleted the first 250 files from the USB, put it in again and it copied the next 250. Ok, so we have some weird kind of 250 song limit in copying. Then realise that it takes each batch and puts them into one "album" on the hard drive. Slightly ridiculous that it doesn't take the mp3 tags for artist/album etc to organise the music a bit more effectively but the infotainment world has obviously moved on quite a lot in the 10 years since the car has launched. The user manual is also relatively useless when it comes to navigating these limitations and it's a trial and error scenario.
4 copies later and I have 4 "albums" of 250 songs on the hard drive. Next step, playlists! The car has 4 empty playlists, I navigate to the first folder of 250 songs and start selecting a bunch of songs I want, then the next folder and the one after that. I then get a sneaky suspicion that perhaps there is a limitation on the number of songs per playlist so don't go through the final folder but try to save the playlist. I was right, too many songs. Documentation on the limitation number? Dream on. So I start again and just select a bunch of songs from album folder 1. The playlist saves fine, I then go to the 2nd album folder and add a bunch more songs, saves fine again. At that point I think I'm up to about 70 or 80 songs so decide to just start a 2nd playlist for the songs from the next 2 folders. This works fine.
The sound out of the system isn't bad, but at the same time it's not great. These are medium quality mp3's (192kbps) but they definitely sound better on a decent pair of headphones/earphones or my soundbar at home. CD sound quality is also similar, not bad, not amazing.
Now that the system is broadly setup with 2 playlists of a whole lot of my favourite songs, it's kind of fine. Could I rename song albums using the dial control etc? There are file modification settings but in all honestly I have no desire to spend the next X years doing this.
The car
The bad stuff out of the way, the car itself is amazing. As mentioned above, the dealer told me that ordinary unleaded is fine for the car and I assume that's what they had used. Certainly the car doesn't have any major issues I could find with it but as mentioned, the idle was fairly rough on this. Having read through all the manuals etc, they are quite explicit to use 98 octane or above, so now I'm on Shell V-Power Nitro+ (99 octane according to Shell) and the rough idle is gone.
I'm somewhat amazed that I haven't had any electrical problems. True, the car is only just over a month old. I've been driving it fairly regularly and generally try to drive it so that it's properly warmed up at least twice a week to hopefully get the battery charging reasonably but I've experienced no issues. The main problem I have is Sport mode. The issue being that I typically want the exhaust in Sport mode all the time (it sounds glorious) but the car stiffens up and it's noticeable. Obviously UK roads aren't the best in the world, Sport isn't uncomfortable as such but road imperfections are definitely quite a bit more noticeable in Sport mode. It would have been nice if they could have had a separate option to put the exhaust in sport vs the suspension/damping.
I drive a reasonable amount in a mix of in town, dual carriageway and country A/B roads and in general I can safely say that I've yet to find a road that the car doesn't attack with aplomb. My one hesitation would be that around where I live there are some single track roads with passing points, as well as some other roads which aren't single track but feel somewhat narrow. The curve of the front bonnet which starts higher over the wheels before lowering down over the centre means that the intuitive sense in some cases is that the car is over the centre of the road which can obviously be quite nerve-wracking with a big car or lorry coming the other way. A quick check in the side mirrors does show that you're actually ok. The other useful thing is of course the folding mirrors. Unlike some cars where these can't be closed if above certain speeds etc, a twist of the dial in the GTS means that these aren't really a problem.
Gear changes in the auto box are good and in normal drive mode, have to agree with some reviews that the auto box suits the nature of the car well. My wife didn't want to drive it at first but when I finally convinced her to give it a try just leaving it in drive and not worrying about paddles or sport etc, she soon settled into it. It very much feels like a car I can use as my daily driver and just stick it in drive when I need to go to the shops. Although it's quite a big car dimension wise, when driving, unless on small roads it really doesn't feel it. Interior space is good, even for someone my size and I don't feel cramped like I do in 911's. The seats are supportive and hold you in place when throwing it into a corner but are still very comfortable and the drive up to Bicester and back with 4 hours behind the wheel in a day was no problem at all.
When you're not at full chat, in sport mode there is a sweet spot when you have the throttle slightly pressed at about 2,300 - 2,700 rpm where the exhaust note is pure heaven. As such I find myself in manual, sport and often trying to hit this sweet spot which has obviously not done wonders for my fuel economy. I'm currently averaging about 14.5mpg. The drive up to Bicester with cruise control on saw me up to the high teens but that's since fallen away again.
Parking sensors are a must have in a car this size and it's relatively easy to manoeuvre given its size, but I do find that the parking sensors feel a little oversensitive to me. I'm used to parking a car, waiting for the beeps to go solid, keeping going another few inches and then stopping. In the GTS, this still leaves me with a bit much room to spare and given the size of the car, I get back in and pull it in a bit further. Not the end of the world, just something to be aware of that needs attuning to.
The doors for the car are quite long though so you need a decent amount of space to the car next to you to get in and out with ease, but if you can get the doors open wide enough, despite being low, I never feel like I have to excessively contort myself to get in and out of the car.
Insurance, HR Owen had their specialist team try to get me some pricing but they were dealing with the private client high end teams of insurers with lots of "extras" included. I really didn't want that and the prices were completely noncompetitive. In the end I added it onto my existing Aviva multi-car insurance. Had to go through to a specialist team who wanted to know about garage and cctv and tracker and how far from the main road it would be kept etc but in the end they insured it for an extra £200/year on top of the BMW costs but with a much higher excess (£1500). My policy is up for renewal in a few months so will shop around in advance of that.
If anyone wants to ask anything that I've not covered here, please ask and I'll do my best to answer. All in all, I'm in awe of the car, yes the infotainment system/graphics on satnav etc are dated and a bit frustrating to deal with but in general I'd say that's all overcome by the epicness of the car.
Edit: I've had my first claim under SMART protection, the car was parked in town and someone must have walked past and swung a coat or a bag next to the car as a fairly long vertical but very light scratch on the rear left quarter panel. Extremely good job, the scratch is now invisible. Very knowledgeable chap who used to work at McLaren and was extremely enthusiastic about the car. So SMART was one of the best decisions I think I made. I want to drive the car and not get ridiculously upset when stone chips/small scratches happen and that's exactly what I felt. Reported the claim and sent in photos yesterday, claim approved in an hour or so and guy came out this morning.
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