The long weekend holiday spelled trouble for me…the kids were off school for a week and the nagging for a beach holiday had already started a week before. I needed a car that was fuel efficient and fuel that would allow us to go further than any other and so to lower my holiday costs. I decided on the new Jetta TSI as the preferred vehicle. In our earlier city test drive, it proved to be a winner with us however its family friendliness and fuel efficiency had little test possibilities during a weekday test.
VGM were happy to oblige and so we picked up of Jetta TSI and filled it up with Caltex Techron5 unleaded. With a full tank and a full car with luggage, swim gear, drinks and the family, we headed out at the wee hours of the morning for the east coast of Malaysia. It was just past 7.40am when we hit creeping traffic on the Karak highway.
A fuel tanker…..of all the possible vehicles to break down…….had stalled in the middle lane on a steep incline. This was just miles before the Genting tunnel. The 52 minute crawl ate into our fuel consumption. After that we sped up…very often breaking local speeding laws and managed to reach Cherating with more than a half tank of fuel left inside. The next 3 days saw some light driving duties of food to nearby Chukai and around Cherating with a total of 317km driven.
On our return, the fuel gauge read just a tad above half tank with a range reading of 350km. The Caltex Techron5 with the VW TSI engine and 7-speed DSG gearbox had given us very good mileage and we had saved money on this holiday trip.