our second car kicked the bucket recently, so i've been in the market for a new car. last weekend my financee and i drove out to a dealer and took a look at a three year old colt ralliart.
its a little box car in the same style as the Barina. the cabin is surprisingly roomy and the rear seat can slide forwards and backwards - forwards to carry shopping, backwards to carry passengers. with the seat all the way back the rear leg room is really quite good and it would be comfortable for long trips. also it has 4 doors which is a plus plus in my books, climate control, and very nice recaros in the front
and then i drove it - and was somewhat disappointed? perhaps its because its the first turbo car i've driven and i had overly high expectations. when driving slowly shifting at 3k, it was a slug. so it's off boost. so i started driving harder, shifting at 4.5k - at that point you could start to feel the power but the turbo only spooled up at 3.5k, and it felt like you'd only just begun to hit to power band and then you had to shift - and next gear you'd drop right out of boost and you'd be a slug again
so i tried driving hard, spinning out to near redline before shifting. on boost it was definitely strong - but then every time you shift, even landing above 3.5k in the next gear, the turbo would drop off and you'd have to wait a second for it to spool before the power came back on
honestly it felt that in every day driving, my Barina would make mincemeat out of this turbo hatch - and i couldn't imagine trying to power out of a corner hard with such an awful power delivery!
to the owners of turbo cars: are they all like this? i'm thinking it was something to do with my driving style, maybe i shift too slowly, and i'm not used to having to keep a car in boost? or is it just that the ralliart colt has bad turbo lag or bad gearing?
it just seemed that if you want any sort of performance, you really have to drive the car hard hard hard - bang the next gear in, keep it above 4k. is this normal? if so i have to say, from my short drive i am definitely more an N/A fan
interested to be educated by comments from SRiT et al owners