[nate]

Was in Mendoza for 4 days recently and due to a snafu with Sixt, they set me up with a Geely from a local Argentine rental company. I had never heard of Geely, but they are a Chinese car company and apparently now own Lotus and Volvo.

This particular example had about 108km on the odometer and I think featured a 1.5L I4 with a 5 speed manual. Man was this thing a piece of shit and possibly the worst car I've ever driven. The only good thing I'll say about it is that it was cheap and didn't leave us stranded. Not fast at all, which was tolerable, as was the terrible shifter feel and vibrations, even on the many unpaved roads. Even the fuel gage, which seemed to be off by 1/2-1/4 of a tank depending on temperature, was tolerable since you can just keep it full.

What was not tolerable was that the pre-tensioner on the driver's seatbelt locked the belt into the retract position on day 2, meaning I couldn't wear a seatbelt. Unlike most cars, the Geely warning chime for not wearing a seatbelt does not go away after a while. Luckily, plugging the pax seatbelt into the driver's seatbelt receiver cured this. Probably not ideal for pax safety.

Goodby shitty Geely and nice to be back in the S4 yesterday.