Be Excellent To Each Other

Judging by the number of supercars I have seen so far today, it must be Eid. The soft top Maserati looked lovely.

Ecotricity (the company that install, maintain and provide rapid chargers for EVs at motorway services around the UK) have made the decision to start charging people to use their rapid chargers.

£5 for a 20 minute charge.

That's going to kill the EV adoption rate in this country stone dead. It doesn't matter how many kWh you get out of the charger in that 20 minutes, you still get charged £5. Doesn't matter if you only need a quick top up so stop charging after 5-10 minutes, you still get charged £5.

20 minutes on one of their chargers gets me about 40-50 miles in my LEAF (less during winter when the battery is colder) which suddenly makes everything a lot more expensive.

I don't really use my LEAF for longer trips any more, so it won't affect me too much, but lots of people rely on them. I doubt any of them would be bothered about having to pay something, but that's a terrible way of doing it.

Why were they previously offering it for free though? Presumably it costs them money to install and maintain the things.

£5 for 50 miles is 10p a mile. That's pretty much a decent diesel car, isn't it?

It was free previously to encourage uptake of EV ownership, and by all accounts it worked.

No-one expected it to stay free forever of course, but I imagine most people hoped that any charges that were eventually levied would still keep EVs an attractive prospect rather than, as MaliA points out, bringing it back in line with diesel and fuel-efficient petrols.

They're also saying that if you use them for your home energy supply, you can use the rapid chargers for free. This raises interesting questions, as the installation of the chargers was heavily subsidised by the Government and EU (and Nissan/Renault)...

So they've stuffed their pockets with subsidies to install the chargers, and have now decided to start stuffing their pockets with more cash for people to use them?

This is the kind of thing I'd expect to be subject to contracts and user service agreements.

After getting all the stuff for 4 people for 5 days into the Subarururururhbarb's 339 litre boot, and covering it with the luggage cover (might buy a dog guard to get it to roof) MrsA has said that a bigger boot isn't really needed. Thus no new second hand car for a while.

So, I am stuck with the Rover. Which, after an overnight 0.6 amp charge has worked fine (save exhaust) albeit with my pulling fuse out of stereo circuit when parked and replacing once engine is running. I am getting to quite like it.

I suppose the upside is money not spent.

Just looked at Subaru Legacy estates.

They've made it onto my possible next car list. The 2009 model 2.0 diesels are 146bhp, 0-60mph 8.5seconds, £180 tax 48.7mpg and 4x4.

Just get another 100k out of my Leon and save up for one.

This was one of the more entertaining cars at the Chateau Impney hill climb today.
A 42 litre engine from a PT boat, doing 1.5 Gallons per mile.

This was one of the more entertaining cars at the Chateau Impney hill climb today.
A 42 litre engine from a PT boat, doing 1.5 Gallons per mile.

I was wondering where my Eco car had got to

Got a call from the dealer earlier today, the Merc is now booked in with the local German car specialist for next Tuesday for proper German style Parktronic interrogation and fault-finding, which I'm guessing will generate a reasonable bill for labour alone.

I have about 5 weeks of the warranty left to run, although I guess (hope!) that as the Parktronic problems are a pre-existing fault he won't just wash his hands of it at that point if it isn't fixed by then.

Hopefully the car will be allowed to stay in the country post-BREXIT.

Let's be honest, no chance of a BREXIT U-turn if we're relying on your swivel-eyed parking sensors.

They seem to indicate that everything is safe to the left, but warn of constant and imminent danger to the right, for some reason.

"YIELD THE CENTRE"

Yay Merc fix! No, really this time.

So it went up to the Merc specialist today and he did some proper specialist diagnostic stuff on it, the details of which I am not privy to, but he located a wiring fault on the Parktronic system and has a 'high degree of confidence' that the problems are now totally resolved.

This is better than previously where the dealer has just been repeatedly replacing parking sensors only for another one
to apparently go duff, which concluded last time with the Parktronic reporting that the sensor they'd just replaced had gone faulty, which was clearly wrong.

I am informed that all communications to the Parktronic Control Module are now normal, and they gave the car an extended test drive during which it behaved itself impeccably. Previous experience suggests I'll know within a day if it is indeed now working properly or not, but it was fine on the way home.

I stopped to take a few pics, because despite all the problems I've had with it, I do really rather like this car, and I think it's rather handsome. For a German.

Gorgeous !

24 hours of fully functional Parktronic, which is the best it's managed for the best part of four months.

Dare I say I'm..... cautiously optimistic that after five months of ownership, my car is now working properly.

Also, now it's fully operational it's in a viable state for trading in, and of course I always keep a beady eye on interesting cars that appear for sale on the local car market. The fact it's just had £375 of tax on it makes me slightly less keen on this proposition though.

I've noticed that on Autotrader the new Type-R has dropped down to £25K for a used example, (which of course is less than a year old with around 5-10K on it), once that gets down to the £20K mark or thereabouts, we may be in business.....

But if you sell, you can claim a refund on the tax that you haven't used. Unless your Banana Republic has different rules of course

A mate at work is selling this....

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/ ... 910632?v=c

If I could get £8K for the Merc - (this is what I've been offered on trade-in, don't know if that would translate to a cash offer or not) - that means *£3000 to get into the RS4.

444 bhp, 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, limited to 155mph, just seeing the numbers makes me a bit tingly. (I bet I'd get it to 155 on the mountain mile as well, since it's limited to that, rather than it being the actual top speed.)

Thing with this car is I know it well, the guy has looked after it with incredible diligence, in a genuine no expense spared sort of way - I suspect it's as nice an RS4 of this age as you'd find.

Couple of nice upgrades as well in that it's got a far more modern Audi head unit/sat nav that he had fitted, and also the camera system.

Gah, why do I love cars so much? I'd be a fucking millionaire if I was content to just pootle around in a bog-standard Ford Fucking Focus.

I absolutely must not take this car out for a test drive, because then my fate will be sealed.

* EDIT - Just pinging the guy on Facebook now, he says he'll get it go for £11K, it's literally just garaged now and not being used. So if I get £8K for the Merc, that's three grand to get into the RS4.

Does it have Parktronic?

It has fully working parking sensors front and rear, but it doesn't have the funky LED bars inside the car, so it doesn't get to call itself Parktronic.

I'm going to return to the dealers that have offered me £8K for the Merc on trade-in and see if that translates to £8K cash.

Three grand to get into a 444bhp monster, I'm finding it very hard to resist.

Fucking shitting bastard twatting bollocking spunkfaced fucking cunt.

And after being at the proper dealer to fix it?

Haven't you got the Audi yet?

I have to get the Merc fixed first......

I've just popped down to the dealer, he'll get it booked in for the next available slot at the German car specialist guy.

He has also assured me that as this is an existing fault, if it's not fixed when the warranty expires next month, they'll continue to do whatever's required to sort it. (I mean, the costs for labour alone would be eye-watering if I were paying for it.)

Oh, that's a bugger.

Relatedly, the cigarette lighter doesn't work on the Rover so I cannot charge my phone, nor run the fridge.

Don't the RS4s of that generation have a reputation for having gearboxes made out of chocolate? Or was that the RS6?

Really not sure TBH. This one has a decent amount of mileage on it and was used as a daily car until it was garaged recently, plus as per his ad, he took it across for three years for specialist servicing and then switched to an island specialist - so anything that's needed doing has been done. (I'm not aware of it having had any gearbox issues and he doesn't mention any in his ad, and this chap is as straight and honest as the day is long.)

If I'm frank I can't see me buying it, as much as I'd absolutely love to have a car like that for my drive over the mountain every day, the potential for stunningly offensive bills is a bit too much even for my stomach.

Plus I need to get the Merc fucking fixed again anyway.

I might revert to Plan B and wait for the latest-gen Type-R to drop down to the £20K mark.

It looks an absolute monster. The styling is definitely an acquired taste though.

Yes I can understand some folks thinking it's rather chav-tastic but I reckon it looks great.

The Honda dealer just down the road - (the one I keep taking the Merc back to) - has one parked outside all the time which is their current demo car, I walk past it twice a day, I'm interested to see what that appears at price wise as an ex-demo example.

It's not going to be below UK prices though, which are currently bottoming out at £25K, so they need to fall a bit further yet.

Yeah, it's certainly a step up from the previous Type R's. 300+bhp, turbo, etc.

I'm considering an S2000 for when the Leaf goes back next September.

You have kids now, Gaz.

They are excellent.

I'd imagine you're approaching "too tall" for a S2000.

Yeah, that's one of the worries.

Considering an MR2 Turbo (again). A shame that prices for Supras have gone a bit silly, would have loved one of those.

I was toying with the idea of a Mk1 Focus RS next but they are silly money now too.

Fab car but there are no cheap ones, if anything they're appreciating somewhat now.

It's about £5K for an early one with long miles on it, and one-way traffic price wise from there. (You can pay £15K-£20K at the top end.)

The VTECs are unburstable of course, but still quite a lot of expensive stuff on them, including consumables like tyres and brakes.

Mate here used to have one, he loved it to pieces but they're wildly impractical for anything beyond what they are, which is a two-seater sports car.

Bit of a weird choice to replace the Leaf with too.

Aren't the S2000's a bit of a squeeze for lanky folk like you and I?

Always heard that the cabin is smaller than say an MX5.

Like Grim... said.

I'm thinking of getting my Type R vinyl-wrapped in Championship White. Anyone have any experience with it, who to go with etc?

Especially as I'll then have a completely pointless electric hook-up point on the outside of my house.

Nothing useless about an electric hookup.

Oh my.

It'll add value to the house... probably.