I suppose you could say I’m still learning to drive in a way. My current car (Mk 7 Fiesta, Facelift) is a wonderful car, but being a 1.25L engine on a fairly large five-door body, it means it doesn’t have much go in it. Or at least, that’s what I thought!
This car has a rev counter, which my last two Kas didn’t have. I’d been changing up gears at 2500 revs, which seemed to work fine. As far as engine noise goes, it sounded like the right point to change up. The trouble is, it meant I didn’t have a massive amount of ‘go’ in it for escaping bad junctions and the like. I always changed up at that point because the engine would whine a bit, and it didn’t sound too good.
Having driven the car more, I’ve found that in fact, if I break through 3000 revs, there’s quite a bit of pickup, which means I can pull away a LOT faster. Now, admittedly it doesn’t help my fuel economies any, but it’s nice to know I actually have a bit more power in that engine than I originally thought. When I first started driving it, I think it was being a little more careful on the accelerator anyway. It’s not like I used to really drive my Kas particularly hard anyway, but they were pretty small, light bodies with a 1.3L engines, so they had a fair bit of pickup. By my reckoning, this modern 1.25 has probably about the same power as a 1996 (when my Ka was new) 1.4 or similar.
Like I say, I’m still learning. This stuff comes with experience, but I’m happy to find I can get more out of my car than I originally thought.