My 3.2 MV6 auto manages about 26-27 MPG overall but not a great deal of that is real town driving. Mostly "A" roads with a little urban driving either end. Normally fairly sedate driving with the odd blast [smiley=evil.gif] It certainly does get through a bit in real city driving but I don't do enough of that to really have a feel for it. Short trips seem to put a fair dent in the consumption as well.
On a motorway run, it'll do low 30's if you're not caning it. Have seen 35MPG average on a trip round the M25 where most of the driving was around 60 due to weight of traffic.
Handling is nice on the MV6. It can be chucked around impressively for a car of its' size. Certainly a bit crisper than an Elite I test drove but I'm only drawing a comparison to one other car so that may not be too representative. You do feel a few bumps through the suspension but it's still a comfortable ride compared to most cars at that level of handling IMHO.
I find performance is great. 0-60 in about 8 on paper for the 3.2 but it has power throughout the rev range meaning you don't have to give it any grief to drive quite briskly. Overtaking is a total breeze. In general a very comfortable and fun car to drive.
Overall cost of ownership depends how much maintenance you can do yourself. To be honest, with the help of the information on this site, and if you're willing to have a go, that will probably be most of it. Cam belt and tensioners need replacement every 40,000 miles / 4 years so that is a significant cost if you're getting a garage to do it, but help is always at hand here and it'll cost around 100 odd quid a time for the parts only. Ignore the 20,000 mile service interval and change the oil much more regularly. 3000-5000 miles is our recommendation but this is a 20 minute job once you're used to it. See the technical info. section for more details of servicing recommendations. It's worth changing the coolant reasonably regularly too, to avoid a couple of issues that can be caused by a weak antifreeze mix. On the whole, you'll see most of the regular problems with an Omega cropping up here but most are not expensive to fix and, provided the cam belt situation is kept on top of, there aren't often major problems.
A 3.2 will probably have other expenses over and above the 2.6. Tyres may be a little more expensive, for example. I find good quality tyres from the big names are about 100 quid a corner or thereabouts (235/45/17).
The only thing I didn't have on the MV6 spec. that I particularly wanted was cruise control and fortunately adding that was only a matter of changing the indicator stalk for one with the requisite extra buttons and getting the feature enabled using a Tech2. I find it's easy to let your speed wander (usually upwards
) and cruise control helps keep that in check on motorway runs.
Sorry for the load of waffle but having been in your situation about 6 months ago most if this is fresh in my mind. I haven't once looked back, by the way
Kevin