I just returned with the family from a road-trip of 2020 miles to Italy and back. I've been meaning to take the 840 for some time and last weekend we set-off in the early morning (wife, me and 2 kids) to the channel-tunnel crossing in deluge of pouring rain. I was shocked to see that the MPG had dropped to around 22 with all the water being dispaced by the tyres. The rain continued through most of France, where the driving on the billiard-smooth motorways was fantastic and the feel of the car and steering improving with speed (I won't say how fast, but we got further on the first day than with any other car previously). The only incident was in France when we stopped briefly for a coffee and quick snack. I'd managed to park the car away from others and it was visible from inside the service station. As we were in the queue to to pay, my son noticed through the windows, in the distance, outside, the hazzard lights flashing and I thought that perhaps the alarm had been trggered due to the doors perhaps not having been closed properly. I sent him out to re-lock the car and he said that it was only the hazzard lights that were on, but no alarm. later, on returning to the car, we noticed that the front nose cone had been cracked with the grills knocked-out, presumably from some other car having reversed into it. The centre part of the nose-cone was cracked, with cracks extending several cm to the left and right of the centre grill. That was a bit of a blow, but we patched it up with tape and carried-on.
After crossing the St Gotthard by way of the 17km road tunnel, we spend the night in a small town in Switzerland, not far from the Italian border. That was uneventful execpt finding in the morning that someone had scraped the rear bumper of the car. Later, we were soon zooming down tne Itaian A1 motorway, passed Milan, heading south then turning in on the A15 towards Parma, where we lost all the mad traffic. Time for some fun again on the die-straight road with virtually no other cars. As the mountains approached in the disstance, the road started to climb with more twisting bends and bridges. I think its the same piece of road where the Top-Gear team filmed driving their suprcars. However, heavy loaded, with 4 people and luggage, the twisty bits were not so much fun. We spent some 3 days in Italy in a small town where the car atracted enough attantion. One morning, I even noticed the local priest cross the road for a better look, whilst the car was parked on a street for market-day.
Unfortunately, the few days of sunshine, good food and wine were soon over and it then time to head back to the UK. This time we took the car over the over the Gottard Pass to try out some hair-pin bends and steep ascents, which it managed very well. After that we took a detour through Germany and then back through France. My wife had got quite used to driving the car by then and liked the feel of the right pedal. We reached the tunnel boarder crossing 2-hours ahead of time but with long queues and thousands of others all returning to the UK at the last minute, it was about right. The passport-control officer commented " Lovely car, is that the 4.4 ? "