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I had an opportunity to take Volvo S40 T5 AWD 2006 to test drive. That car was equipped with automatic transmission. It has 2.5 liter 218 hp turbocharged engine and 0-100 km/h should be reached in 7.5 seconds. So it is quite fast. Of course I tested its acceleration and when you reach about 4000 rpm then it is really going. But it is amazing nice car to drive with slow speeds also. It has enough torque to cruise just 50km/h with 5th gear. And when you hit pedal to the medal at that speed then it changes a couple of gears lower and there you go again. I drove that car in wet conditions but still I did not saw DTSC light flashing when accelerating, thanks to AWD. Even in the gravel acceleration was very good and I did not noticed wheel spin almost at all. It was really fun to drive with this car.

Only negative thing is that it is so called medium size sedan. The trunk is large in capacity, but a bit small in opening size. And if I adjust the drivers seat to my driving position there is not much leg room behind me after that. I personally prefer cars with little bit more room.

Volvo S40 T5 AWD specs

Engine type: 2.5-liter, five-cylinder turbocharged, DOHC
· Horsepower: 218 hp @ 5000 rpm
· Torque: 236 lb-ft @ 1500 – 4800 rpm
· Redline: 6500 rpm
· Drive type: all wheel drive
· 0 – 60: 6.5 sec
· 1/4 mile: 15.2 sec @ 93.0 mph
· Top speed: 149 mph

A couple of days ago I got an interesting opportunity to chip tune my car. I got offer 550 eur ($750) if I decided to chip tune my car before June 20th. That sound very tempting idea. I am now driving Volvo S60 2.5T, it got 210 hp and 320 Nm. After chip tuning it would have about 250 hp and 390 Nm, pretty impressive figures, don’t you think? What should I do?

I figured that if I can get that money from this blog, then I probably go and chip tune my car. If I chip tune my car, I will take some acceleration videos of 100-150 km/h, 80-120 km/h before and after tuning so it would be easy to compare results. I think that it would provide some informative and useful data to others who are planning to do chip tuning.

At last weekend I visited in my local Mitsubishi dealer. They had a new Mitsubishi Outlander 2007 SUV just arrived. In my mind new Outlander looks a lot better compared to old Outlander.
There is a good amount room inside and even I can sit quite comfortable. My height is 191 cm, so believe me, it is not always easy to find good driving position. And there is also enough room for me to sit at the backseats. Nice feature with backseats are that you can adjust amount of legroom. Those backseats are moving a little bit in forward-back position. At the trunk there are a decent amount of space depending on a position of backseats.

I took the car to quick test drive. This car had only 2.0 liter diesel engine with manual gearbox, so you can imagine that it do not offer too much power. In my mind it is a way too underpowered engine for that car. I did not like its behavior. Especially when I am used to a little bit more powerful engines. And a second annoying thing was a gearbox, it is really frustrating to drive a car with manual gearbox when you are used to drive car with automatic gearbox. I have got car with automatic gearbox now about seven years and I can not see any reason to change back to manual gearbox.

It is shame that there is no other engine and transmission combinations coming into Finland, at least not in this year. With a little more powerful engine and automatic gearbox, I would definitely consider a new Mitsubishi Outlander to my next car.

Mitsubishi Outlander 2007 specs:

Engine Capacity: 1968 cc
Cylinders: 4
Valves: 16v
Power: 138@4000 bhp/rpm
Torque: 228@1750 lb/ft
Maximum Speed: 116 mph – (Man)
0 – 62 mph: 10.8 seconds – (Man)
Fuel Type: Diesel
Fuel Capacity: 60 litres / 13.2 gallons
Combined Fuel Consumption: 42.8 mpg – Manual
Range to Empty: 564.9 miles