Into Europe with The Blue Flea!

Touring Europe with a Very Small Car? Are you serious? Usually the more experienced drivers tend to think that only the larger and more powerful automobiles can be recommended for Continental Travel - preferably a Bentley Continental or Lincoln Continental or something similar. This attitude is - to put it mildly - outmoded. The small car of the present day is much, much better than the unreliable contraptions of yesterday. The modern small car can hold its own on the German autobahns as well as on the steep slopes of the Alps. Believe me, I speak with the knowledge that I have gained on more than 15.000 kilometres of Continental European roads.

In the summer of 1996 myself and my dear long-suffering wife got the idea to go to Italy by car as five years had passed after our previous trip. We were a bit apprehensive because in the meantime we had changed our car: the speedy Alfa-Romeo had become a 50 horsepower Corsa Diesel. The luggage of two persons could be stuffed into The Flea - name immediately given by my wife for our Utility Vehicle - but how could we manage with so little power on the Free Speed autobahns of Germany? And could The Flea climb the steep inclines of the Alps. And would such a small car survive the ordeal?

Not to worry

We shouldn't have worried. Everything went according to plan - well, you cannot take into account a couple of times we went astray because you cannot blame the car for those, can you? Even on the German autobahns we had no problems. Of course you had to be very observant indeed and do as the natives did.

If the road had three lanes going to one direction the Flea bowled happily along with the traffic at about 120 km/h (75 mph). Because at full throttle the Flea did in excess of indicated 160 km/h (100 mph) we did try the fast lane, too. In spite of the low power we experienced no problems, the engine did not overheat, nothing of the sort. Fuel consumption did increase, though. Instead of the normal of well under 5 litres per 100 km (over 60 mpg) the consumption rose to 5.3 litres of diesel per 100 km (53 mpg).

When driving on the fast lane you have to watch your mirrors because suddenly there can be a Porsche or some other real flyer nipping at your heels and flashing lights at you. There is no real reason for panic, however. The fliers have good brakes and the drivers have used to the fact that even the Germans take their time to get out of the way. You are wise to take the first slot available, though.

Well, if there are only two lanes in one direction the situation is a bit more difficult. With a flyer approaching you have to yield into the slow lane. In the slow lane the big artics drive very slowly indeed so when you want to return to the faster lane you´d need to have much power and good acceleration. But with a little bit of waiting you will find a space - and the Germans make use of much smaller spaces than we are used to. Because of that you must be prepared to act when suddenly a car will bounce from the slower lane to right in front of you. This is especially irritating when the driver of an artic driving in the slow lane at 80 km/h has gotten enough of driving behind a similar vehicle doing only 79 km/h. The artic driver just turns on the flasher and drives coolly onto the faster lane - and the whole queue brakes. This appears to be the custom in that country - and we cannot do nothing but respect the foreign customs.

It might be a bit surprising but when you have succeeded in getting onto the fast lane the small diesel can quite well keep up with the traffic. Even though the acceleration of the individual cars in the queue is superior to the small diesel the queue accelerates more slowly so there will be no problems - except those flyers, but there are not so many of them.

Even though German autobahns do not have general speed limits, you cannot drive very long at full speed - the traffic will take care of that. Every once in a while the traffic will grow thicker and thicker and slower and slower until it stops altogether. To us it happened about once a day, but the stops were not longer than some minutes - except at one accident site close to the Europa Brücke.

How about Italy? In principle it is similar to Germany - but in Germany the traffic flows relatively evenly along the correct lanes but in Italy they accelerate and decelerate more so that one has to be on guard and alert all of the time.

In the mountains there are no problems even with a small car - modern small cars can climb the hills without a hitch. You have to read the map a bit more carefully than normal because if you happen to find yourself at the wrong side of a mountain its a long way to the right side.

Small is useful

Driving a small car can sometimes bring you a surprising benefit: sympathy.

On our way to Europe we were approaching the Rödby (Denmark) ferry harbour in very good time, about three hours before the departure time of the ferry on which we had a reservation. However the ferry queue started even some kilometres before harbour - so we had to queue, too.

After about half an hour of crawling slowly we got to the ticket office and explained to the clerk that we had a reservation. The clerk promptly decided to have his coffee break and left us for a quarter of an hour. When he got back he guided us to wait among the other vehicles and so in minutes we were surrounded by truly numerous big Mercedeses of the German tourists.

When the scheduled departure time of the ferry began to creep closer and nothing seemed to happen I went and spoke to the young man who was directing the traffic. I explained, politely, that we had a reservation but there we sat in the middle of the queue and cannot get out. At fist the man did not show any interest in our problem but when I resignedly - and in English, of course - damned the big Mercedeses he suddenly was alert.

Excuse me, what did you say? I repeated. What was your car? That small blue one in the middle? The man grasped his walkie-talkie and among the flow of Danish I could discern the words "lille blu Opel" and lo and behold - in the next ferry there was a place for one small automobile.

The next thing was to get the Flea out of the Mercedes herd and even that we succeeded in doing quite miraculously. The man directed the cars before us to wait in another lane and guided us to drive aboard the ferry - and then he stopped the queue behind us. So we got just the boat on which we had our reservation - and just in time.

So sometimes it is easier to keep the schedule with a small car than in a bigger one.

PS: The reason for our giving up Alfa-Romeo ownership and buying a Corsa Diesel was not impending bankruptcy or anything like that. No, it was just an attack of realism. And we have had no reason to regret it - in fact we have sold our other Alfa-Romeo as well and bought another Corsa, a red one this time - so we have His and Hers. Well, we had – after 8 and a half years and 288.778 trouble free kilometres the original Blue Flea has been sold, too – I now drive a Toyota Corolla – but it is a diesel, of course.

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