Be Excellent To Each Other

Both obviously nice cars, but they don't really make me go "Wow"

Yeah I dare say that if you had the sort of money to buy one they might seem very exciting but as something to just look at I've seen them both before except very slightly different. Boring car sequels.

That's exactly what I was thinking. They're the Arkham Knight of cars.

Arkham Knight is great, fewl. Origins is the ropey one.

"Boring car sequels" is a very good way of describing them, though.

It's the same but slightly more, is what I meant. Origins would be the Bugatti Niva.

You mean the Aston Martin Toyota IQ.

HAHAHA I'd forgotten about that

Finally at the dealer picking up my 'new' car.

That'd work out at around 13mpg?

That seems ruinously low, even for an M5 I'd have thought?

Either way that's the main reason I shy away from cars like that, or an AMG Merc, or even just a Scooby again. I only do around 35-40 miles per day on average, which isn't much, but it's easy to see how I could damn near double my fuel bill based upon an MPG of around 20 as opposed to around 40, and the bill over the course of a year isn't trivial.

Still not got a final answer on my refund for the aftermarket audio kit, spoke to the chap today and he said he's still waiting for an answer from the supplier he bought it from. I'm wondering though, under distance selling regulations, can't he just send it back even if he thinks it smells a bit funny, or the colour is wrong?

Ultimately I'm not going to get too bent out of shape about it, although if I can't get a refund, I'm almost minded just to collect the kit from him (I've already paid for it after all), and just bung it up on eBay to get a chunk of my cash back - with the ability play dual-layer MP3 DVDs from the head unit, the need for 'other mass storage options' has just totally gone away.

DSR doesn't apply for business to business sales I believe.

Fairly easy, yeah.

I can't see it.

You just need to really work with the numbers, and turn the science dial up to eleven.

So let me get this straight: halving the distance travelled per unit of fuel doubles the cost of said fuel over the same distance travelled per month? I'll need you to show your workings.

Well obviously I don't have access to a Windows 10 calculator, but I'm pretty sure my numbers are right.

Boring car spoiler warning

Decided to replace the (leased) RR Evoque for the missus; it's coming up to 3 years old and, whilst we both really like it, loads has, and continues to go wrong with it, and I don't fancy picking up the tab now the warranty's about to expire (or paying nearly £1000 for ONE YEAR warranty.... wft?? Faith in products, much?)

Anyway, cut a long story short I've plumped for a brand spanking Audi A3 1.6TDI Technik SE which comes with nav and all the basic toys; you pay no road tax at all and has a book combined fuel cycle of ~80mpg (probably 60mpg real world), yet still manages the dash to 60mph in around 10 secs and has the usual diesel torque and in-gear acceleration. It's not my sort of motor (it's a posh Golf basically) but Mrs C is a sucker for those four silver rings on the bonnet, what can I say.

Managed to haggle the monthly rental down to £232/month incl VAT, for 12,000 miles pa/3 years, which I thought was pretty damn good; you're doing well to find any new or nearly new car that depreciates less than £2700 per year, less road tax each year as well, and really low fuel bills. (The Evoque costs more than double that per month, so that's quite a saving there)

So yeah. Posh diesel econobox here we come.

Picture of the spoiler please.

Haven't got it yet mate
Should be around 2 weeks I think.

I averaged 12.7 over the course of my ownership.

I get 53 as a long term average in my 2.0TDI Octavia so 60 seems achievable with the smaller engine.

Blimey, so I'd be on three gallons a day then

Crivens. That's awful.

The first ever vehicle that I owned and drove was a 5.7l Ford F150 with the Interceptor V8 in (the same engine they used in the Crown Vic police car) and it used to do around 10 MPG. Thing is that was in the USA in 2001 when 'gas' cost around £1.20 a gallon.

I couldn't even contemplate trying to run a vehicle like that in the UK. I used to complain when my Tiburon only got around 20 MPG when I booted it.

It wasn't so bad when I lived close to work (during the time I owned it, I lived either 2 miles away, or 100 metres away) but now that I'm 18 miles out I'm glad I don't have it any more!

And, you know, 507bhp N/A V10, it's not going to be frugal. The guy that had it off the dealer I traded it into has just part-exed it for the new M5, which is a 560bhp twin-turbo (subs, please check) V8 that gets around 30 mpg.

You're good. Carry on.

Two more things I like about the Merc:

1) It is the first car I've EVER owned which possesses fully functional automatic windscreen wipers. I've had a lot of cars with allegedly automatic wipers over the years and they've all been various flavours of rubbish, which IMO is tacitly admitted by the manufacturers as they all had manual 'sensitivity' settings whilst in auto mode (the Type-R being the most recent example, which had no fewer than FIVE sensitivity settings whilst supposedly being in automatic mode), which is just another way of doing old-fashioned variable-speed intermittent wipe in my book, and not really automatic at all.

They would routinely get confused by different sorts of rain, and there was always a 'wrong' sort of rain whereby I'd have to twiddle the sensitivity setting or get irritated enough to switch to an occasional manual flick or just normal speed wipe mode.

Don't get me wrong, they would generally work OK most of the time, but there were always times when I'd have to manually intervene.

This doesn't happen with the Merc. In fact, they appear to be so confident that the automatic wipe is fit-for-purpose that there are no sensitivity settings or anything else to twiddle, if it's in auto mode it's just in auto mode and that's that. I have now driven it through a large variety of delightful Manx rains, showers, downpours, drizzles, hailstorms and fuck knows what else - and it has coped perfectly with all of them. I've had a look at the sensor cluster in the windscreen and it looks a lot more complex than the ones I've seen fitted to my other cars.

Either way, for the first time ever I appear to have a car where I can genuinely leave the windscreen wipers in automatic mode 100% of the time.

2) Similar to the above, the automatic adaptive volume when it's playing music. Again, this is a feature I've had before, the idea is that as you're going faster there'll be more wind and road noise and vice versa, so the stereo increases and decreases its volume automatically to compensate, but I've always found it forced, annoying, and with a tendency to over-compensate to the extent that I'm really aware of the volume adjustments beyond what the situation requires - as such I've always ended up turning it off.

The Merc has it on all the time, there is no option to turn it off, the handbook simply says that the car will adjust the volume based on a 'variety' of factors including speed, engine stress, ambient noise in the cabin, whether or not the windows are open, and so on.

And like the wipers it works perfectly, to the extent that it's really hard to notice it's even doing anything, except that when I'm blasting along at 100mph+ the volume is just right, as it is when I'm pootling along at 30mph, or sat still at the lights, have the window open or closed or anything else. It's obviously adjusting the volume because one size would most certainly not fit all in those situations, and I can just about perceive it doing the adjustments sometimes, but it's almost entirely seamless.

Now then, I wouldn't say these things would justify dropping £50K on a car of course, but when you've only paid £10,450 they are very pleasant and obvious steps up in quality from the cars I've had before.

Oh yes it's got one of those polarising rear-view mirrors which does some weird chemical trickery to dim the mirror (without moving it) when someone comes up behind you with their headlights on in the dark, think it's called electrochromatic. I've had this on a couple of cars in the past (I think the C6 had it, and maybe even the C-Max), and really missed it on the Accord and the Type-R, so I'm very glad to have that back - it's one of those modern technologies that makes a genuinely positive quality of life improvement when driving.

Until it does the BMW thing and leaks the electrochromatic fluid all over the interior

Well, the rear view mirror in the Picasso has a secret hidden feature where it sometimes spontaneously falls off and smashes painfully into my left hand as it rests on the gearstick.

Check and mate, fancy car owners.

In the ka, whatever is in the mirror is losing.

Don't say things like that. Nothing will go wrong with this car, ever. It'll be fluid and filters every 18 months, no more. *



* Please Lord.

You will swap in within 6 months

Hmph. Well frankly, I'm pretty put out that the imminent arrival of Mrs C's 1.6 diesel A3 hatch hasn't electrified the forum.

I almost dropped off to sleep just reading this sentence.

I think people will be a lot more excited when it actually arrives, they probably can't quite believe what they're hearing.

!


But yeah, really can't say I blame you.

Well, who would want an A3?

Yes, I hadn't thought of that but you're quite right Mark; it's not exactly "Toad of Toad Hall" material, that's for sure.

There're quite a nice little hatch to be fair. Wouldn't be my choice.

The only Audi I would own:


And only if I ever have a family and need something this big.

Or a longboard

Only kooks ride longboards.

True, dat

I've always fancied the A7 saloon, if I ever have the ca$h money.

You may miss the subtext of me having owned a T reg A3 up until the end of last october. Before upgrading to a 07 Mercedes c sport thing.

That an RS6 Myp?

I can see why people like these, but must admit they're not my cup of tea (though an S6 I drove once was an absolute hoot to be fair). If I did have one, it'd have to be the estate ("Avant") for extra incredulity points at an estate car doing nearly 200mph.

But yeah, they're just too damn big and heavy - Audi try to compensate for these porcine 2-tonne beasts by shoving a 600bhp ruinously thirsty engine into 'em (much like Gaz's 12mpg V10 M5), but use them anything like hard - or heaven forbid on a track - and all that mass/inertia is going to cook the brakes, wreck the car over time, stuff is going to expensively start falling off/apart, tyres will be shredded. Really, these things are for posing and pissing people off at traffic lights or flashing the plebs out of the way on motorways - the exact opposite of what I like, which is low weight, sorted, sweet handling, small dimensions, delicacy and finesse (which some might find surprising, having met me in person ). For me, a rapier is where it's at, not a fucking great swinging axe.

The Avant is in the picture shown, yes. I wouldn't have the saloon.

A7 and RSx are very popular in Bradford which has high unemployment and is one of the poorest cities.

That reminds me, when I was in Monaco a few years ago I saw a Ferrari Testarossa that had been turned into an estate. The unabashed philistinism of it was magical.

Heh! Yes, on the one hand it is utter philistinism (albeit the Testarossa, with those hideous 80s slotted air scoops and "clown car" build quality, isn't particularly fondly recalled amongst the Tifosi, I dare say), but there's something wonderful about this nonetheless.

Now, if it were a GTO on the other hand, I think I'd be a tad pissy about it.

Drug dealers' car of choice? Gotta love that sure-footed, idiot-proof Quattro handling, right?

Couldn't possibly comment