Be Excellent To Each Other

Cor, that Autocar review of the Civic Type R was painful to read. It felt like really hard work, a slog to get through.

I have to admit that I think that new Civic looks alright, although I wouldn't buy one. My friend is buying one though!

It does look like they chopped the head off Optimus prime and stuck wheels on it

Currently at Nissan ordering a Leaf. Exciting times.

Cool, ask the salesperson how many electrons it has.

A 1962 Lincoln Continental just parked up outside.....

I'll say one thing for the Americans, they sure as hell knew how to make BIG cars. You could easily live in the thing.

I've seen it around the place before, but never at such close quarters!

(It says on the registration plate in small writing that it's a 1962 Lincoln Continental.)

According to Wikipedia it will have either a 7.0L, a 7.5L, or a 7.6L V8 in it, probably only putting out around 150bhp through a three-speed auto and returning 8mpg, but still.....

My first car was a Ford F150 5.7l V8. It too did about 8 MPG but man, peeling wheels was fun as fuck in that thing.

Man, what a juxtaposition after my post

Two triple-headed rapid chargers were installed at Telford services on the M54 just yesterday, so with a short detour on the way home from work I could do a rapid charge (30 minutes max.) at the services for free (currently, at least) and effectively zero my fuel costs.

Relatedly, does anyone want to buy a BMW 750i?

Must resist......

Haven't you only had it a month?

I think DocG's wife learned to drive in one of those.

Two. A new record

Heard that Contintental fire up around 11pm last night so popped out for a quick chat with the owner and his wife. Turns out he worked in the States for a few years and brought it back with him as he's always loved big American cars from watching telly and films when he was growing up.

It's the 7.0L variant and it does indeed return less than 10mpg, usually around 8mpg, in fact. That massive V8 sounded incredibly horny, I have to say.

He has another car for day-to-day use but does enjoy driving the Continental as a bit of a treat.

Nice people too.

You could probably turn one of those into a real beast if you threw money at a tuning shop.

I think that's about what my 535d returns on my 4.5 mile commute.

Then again, Helen's mk3 mx-5 drinks a surprising amount the way I drive the same route. Tyres squeal a lot more too

I'm not having much luck shifting the BMW

Well it's a pretty limited market I'd suspect, and aren't cars like that about to get blasted into the sun with new tax rules next year or something?

What's the tax on a car like that at the moment? I know over here that engine/emissions will put you straight into the £463 per year bracket, and I believe it's getting hiked a fair bit next year too.

It gave me pause for thought when I was looking at that R36 (well, that and the beach's worth of crap that appeared to have been deposited under the bonnet).

Saw this in the Village just now. Awesome.

My LEAF is sat at Nissan Telford awaiting PDI and collection, woo! I have the reg. number and that shizz, so it's all go for collection on Saturday it seems.

LEAF Day!



Have done about 50 miles in it so far. Currently charging off a 3-pin plug at home, although my dedicated charger will be installed on Monday.

Happy LEAF day!
Picture not of leaf.

Isn't that really depressing after a 750i?

Nope.

The car is just as well specced as the 750i was - in fact, it's better. It's quieter, smoother, plenty fast enough, and of course is significantly cheaper to run.

Hippy!

My front left tyre had 13 psi the other day.

I'm a total convert. How much do you think you'd have to pay for a BMW with:

Heated leather seats
Heated steering wheel
Bluetooth handsfree (with Audio, usually a costly option)
USB/iPod connectivity and AUX IN
Sat-nav with a 7 digit postcode search (no BMW I've had does this, but newer ones might)
A BOSE sound system
Rear view camera
All-round view camera
Auto lights
Auto wipers
Various driving modes
Regenerative braking
Tyre pressure monitoring
Ability to set timers for climate control/heated steering wheel etc. to come on

And on top of all this, not pay ANY road tax (or VED or whatever you want to call it), have minimal servicing costs (no fluids to change and very few moving parts to worry about!) AND only pay about 2p per mile (or 0p per mile if you happen to have a handy free of charge rapid charger a few miles away from you that you can use)

They've tried it with the i3, but that falls short on the fact that it's totally impractical thanks to it's diminutive size, and is significantly more expensive for no range benefit over the LEAF.

About the only thing my LEAF doesn't have which I might have found useful was rear parking sensors, but given that it has a rear camera that's not a huge loss.

If you're ever near Wombwell, my brother hashas a fast charger installe

Before July I'd never driven a car before, and now I'm driving round in a blue 2003 Toyota Celica.

a) This is a pre-invation to my funeral.
b) It looks like your car in this picture, which probably means it is. Do you feel ashamed?

That's a Ford Puma.

Those are all things that I care about, so my interest is really piqued. What's the boot space like? Interested to hear if using the heaters, gadgets etc has much impact on battery life?

Leather seats? Not that much of a hippy!

That sounds lovely Gaz. I don't care for cars, but I like electric brum with gadgets! I hope they are affordable for greater numbers one day. They make me happy, like fields of giant wind turbines turning magestically in the sun.

I'm sure that MrsG's next car will be electric, she just got another Honda Jazz that's only a couple of years old so that'll probably stay with us for five years or so and by then I would reckon that electric cars will be starting to make up a good proportion of new cars sold. There's no way I could live with one as the only car in the household though, even the most ardent fans seem to have a fossil burner as well for longer trips.

The driver's side door handle does not work on the Ka. I had to climb in through the boot this morning.

I would get an electric car but it isn't a good deal right now. The Ka needs a tank of petrol every 2 weeks (£40) so unless one is available for less than £80 a month I'll leave it for now. Although a door you can open from the outside is a big draw.

Why the boot rather than the passenger side?

That thing is an affront to the gas guzzling money pits thread!

We need a lawnmower riding hippies thread.

(In all seriousness, I can imagine a car like the Leaf is absolutely amazing in a lot of scenarios, although I'm not sure I'd want to be charging to work and back over the mountain here every day in one.)

I parked it up against the fence on the driveway so it would be easier to get the pushchair in and out (like many houses in The North, we don't use the front door).

Do you crawl in your house via an open bathroom window?

Boot space is 370 litres in the standard model, 355 in the Tekna (the one I have) as it has a BOSE subwoofer taking up a bit of room.

And you can fold the seats down of course, so lots more space available if you need it.

Using the climate control has an impact on range, but seems to be minimal - 5 km. The car tells you what impact switching it on/off will have too.

Yeah, they're really not there yet as far as longer trips are concerned (Teslas excepted) but they will get there, and in the mean time there are always the plug-in hybrids - I was following a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV through town this morning.

How far do they go on a charge? And how do they do with hills?

Like my drive in the morning is a climb up onto the mountain road (the clue's in the name!) and I have to do that twice a day, on the way to work and then back again.

I once got a an Aygo as a courtesy car, it didn't like the mountain climb. At all.

I charged to 100% last night and the rangemeter (also known as the Guess-o-meter!) read 90 miles. Real world range you'd be looking at 80-90, but long climbs can have a significant effect on range.

Although of course, if the downhill section is just as long, you can use the regenerative braking to charge the battery back up again.

90!

Yeah, guessometer

Having lived in the North for many years... What?

I have an electric car question. Do they have gears and a clutch?

In The North, front doors are seldom used by Northern People.

We use the back door. Well, more of a side door. Leads to the kitchen, rather than the entrance hall.

No.

I don't think they have a clutch - I would imagine the "throttle" just controls the motor speed which turns the axles/wheels or whatever. Not 100% sure on that though.

The Tesla Roadster originally had 2 gears I believe, but it caused problems and there wasn't really any need for it, so they took the second gear out. I assume the Model S is also "single gear", and the LEAF certainly is.

There's no need for gears though - being powered by electric motors on each of the (driven) wheels, it can get full torque immediately - which is one of the reasons the Model S can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds, and why even the LEAF (despite a tested 0-60 time of about 10 seconds) will beat most cars off the line.

There's a "drive selector" in the LEAF which looks like this:


Press the button on top to put it into Park.
Pull it across and down to put it into D, and do it again to put it into B (D is normal drive, B is basically normal drive but with strengthened regenerative braking) or pull it across and up to put it into R.

No "handbrake" either - where the clutch would normally be is a pedal which operates the "handbrake", push it down to apply, and to release you then just push it again and it springs back up.

All surprisingly intuitive

//edit: That image is from a LHD car, incidentally, the direction you pull the lever is reversed.