Driving Impressions

I love to test drive cars and every car leaves its own impression on me, even if it is a brief five minute drive. So I have decided to try and put a bit of structure into my own test drives for comparing various cars and to serve as a future reference for myself and for anyone who may find this useful.

Each driving impression will be structured into several sections:

1. Driver comfort and adjustments. This is about how comfortable the driver can get in this car. How adjustable are the controls to get a good seating position for different drivers. How intuitive the placement of various commonly used controls are for a driver.
2. Visibility from the driver position. This is about how aware you can be of your surroundings and whether there are major blind spots.
   
3. Straight line acceleration. This is about basic power delivery, whether it is smooth and suited to the purpose of the vehicle.
4. Handling of irregular road surfaces and speed humps. This is about how the car handles the normal irregular road surfaces and speed humps that one encounters daily. A note to those not familiar with China: The number of speed humps here is insane and the size of the humps are crazy too. You can forget about lowering your car till it hugs the ground with humps like these around.
5. Turning. This is a guide of how well balanced the suspension is and how well the car handles cornering and quick U-turns.
6. Braking. Both in terms of brake sensitivity and braking distance.
   
7. Overall noise in the cabin. This about how well sorted out and damped the chassis is and the level of soundproofing that has already been done.
   

Driving impressions:
2009 Mini Cooper
2009 Mini Cooper Clubman
2009 Kia Carnival
2009 Kia Grand Carnival VQ
2009 Buick GL8