ViaMichelin X-950T sat nav: tracking down treasure

By Rory Reid on 20 July 2006, 12:04pm

Yesterday, on the hottest day in British history, ViaMichelin thought it would be a good idea to invite Crave to take part in a treasure hunt that involved driving around central London in a baking hot Vauxhall Vectra with an X-950T satellite navigation system. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

We've blogged about the X-950T previously, but popped along anyway. Like all good treasure hunts, we were asked to decipher clues, navigate to specific locations and perform special tasks. Our favourite was task two, which required us to visit a London hospital and obtain a picture of a nurse.

Unfortunately one of the other teams consisting of rival journalists sabotaged our chances of completing the task by telling the hospital security guard the Crave team would be arriving to film an unauthorised documentary. They threw us out, so we had to take snaps of some passing physiotherapists instead.

For the next task, we used the X-950T to navigate to a local supermarket where we had to buy gifts for the ViaMichelin girls (with their money). After much debate, we opted for strawberries and cream. It later emerged that the crooks who stitched us up for task two bought the ViaMichelin girls hair removal cream.

Our final stop was the Science Museum where we had to pick up a leaflet showing the latest exhibition. This was made difficult owing to the fact that the museum had closed for the day (not even the X-950T's traffic avoidance system could help us get there in time), but we snuck in with some builders and emerged with the required leaflet.

The day turned out to be quite useful. The X950-T performed well, and although it displayed an annoying penchant for not suggesting illegal U-turns, we'd say it gives all the major sat-nav devices a run for their money. You can check out a list of its key features here, or pop down to your local Comet store. Prices start from £299. -RR