Be Excellent To Each Other

Curse you Facebook. It's almost like it's spying on me. Lol.

This one is at a dealer in Ramsey, his forecourt is a five minute walk away.

Still, only three doors, which at least puts it into the non-starter category I suppose.

I don't even know why I'm lusting after these preposterous big Audis either, and yet for some reason I am.

In my experience, getting a kid into a car seat was loads easier with the bigger doors on the 3 door Ka than the 5 door 25.

And as you can punt the Merc off for 8k then you are halfway to the Audi.go for it

I'll have a wander over this morning. Just for a look like. Definitely just looking.

It'd be amusing just for how much it'd annoy my boss, as he's got an S-Line A4. (The S-Line is the one that looks fast but isn't.)

Had a proper look around it, the guy is closed on Sundays (which I knew already), which is good because it left me free to have a decent nosey at it free from mithering.

Overall condition is very good, but not the showroom perfection that the Merc had when I went to look at it. Nothing major although there is a fairly bad scuff above one of the rear wheel arches, some stone chips elsewhere, and suchlike.

For some reason it has three brand new Pirellis on it, and one knackered Bridgestone. This seems very strange to me. Why on earth would you put three new tyres on an S5 and then not bother with the fourth? The advert says it has four new Pirellis on it so doubtless the fourth is around somewhere - but even so, odd.

However the real clincher in the negative column is the rear seats. Even if I were prepared to foist the indignity on Mrs Hearthly of having to climb in and out of the back, I wouldn't inflict the 'cosiness' of the rear quarters on her. It's not like the rear seats in an Audi TT kind of small and cramped way, but there's not much space back there either. She'd probably be OK sat behind Hearthly Jnr but the seat behind me wouldn't really be usable by an adult, and at just shy of 6 feet tall I'm not exactly a giant.

Lovely car, but needs two more doors and proper back seats, I think.

The *5 series are 2+2s aren't they?

Nope, full four seaters.

Well it only had two seats in the back, same as the Merc in that regard. But whereas the Merc has two proper rear seats with plenty of room so two adults can sit in comfort, the S5 had what was visibly a somewhat cramped rear passenger compartment. The driver's seat was probably about where I'd normally have it, and looking at the legroom behind it, the seat on that side of the car would have been for children only really.

So in that regard both the Audi S5 and the Merc W219 CLS would be '2+2' cars, but the Merc would be fine for four adults, and the S5 wouldn't.

It depends what you want to define a 2+2 as really, Wikipedia has a go at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B2_(car_body_style)

I've always been put off Audis because of part prices. Back in the late 90s my cousin bought a VW Golf Rally (or is it Rallye?) Any way he crashed it into a roundabout and bent the driveshaft for the front 4wd. It didn't use standard shafts like the 2wd G60 they were Audi shafts off the Quattro and set him back £800. And that was 18 years ago.

Not sure if it's changed but beware, high performance Audi parts ain't cheap.

Lots more on the road though now so maybe not that big an issue.

And let's face it, when he buys it on Monday he'll get all the jobs done on it that need doing under warranty then get something else anyway.

Nah the S5 is deffo off the list. Mrs Hearthly gave me a bit of a look when I rolled up in the Type-R and she clocked it was a three-door, so having moved to the Merc (which possesses a full compliment of doors), she would be less than thrilled to see another three-door arrive - and then she'd have to fully appraise the 'snugness' of the rear passenger accommodation as well.

I do however quite like the idea of buying eccentric ten year old cars, spending months getting everything on them fixed, and them immediately punting them on. Making the world a better place, one daft old car at a time - it'd be like an amazingly shit super power that no one ever asked for.

Why does she sit in the back?

Sorry, I can't phrase this without sounding blunt and rude.

Hearthly Jnr decided she was too big to sit in the back, some time around the Citroen C6/Honda Accord era as best I can recall. (Previously she'd tended to sit in the back with Mrs Hearthly, or Mrs H in the front and Jnr in the back.) Mrs Hearthly wasn't fussed as if anything it gave her a bit of downtime to just sit in the back and watch the world go by whilst I fielded Jnr's fifty million questions every couple of minutes.

This worked slightly less well of course when I swapped the Accord for the Type-R, at which point we were down a couple of doors, and Jnr was in no way prepared to even consider sitting in the back, so Mrs Hearthly had to clamber into the back, which I always felt bad about.

So now we have the Merc which (1) Has rear doors and (2) Is lovely and comfortable in the back (by all accounts the Type-R wasn't a pleasant car to be sat in the back of), so I'm extremely reluctant to move to a car which represents an obvious downgrade in the overall car experience for Mrs Hearthly. (Which the S5 would have been.)

(For the record Mrs Hearthly can't drive, she had over 100 lessons and failed her test six times, and got through three different driving instructors. For her last test things had got so bad her doctor prescribed her beta-blockers, but they didn't help and she failed spectacularly, to the extent that her instructor took me to one side afterwards and said 'I really don't know what else I can do'. As such I am always designated driver - FOREVER.)

36mpg, 4WD and sub 9 second 0 to 60

Might be worth a look before holibobs.

Do you need a 4x4? Otherwise you'd probably be better off with a non-scout Octavia.

You're the only person I know with a 4x4 who actually needs one.

As a decorative garden ornament

Short answer: We want one 4wd to use.
Longer answer: Having a 4wd is a lot more useful than not having one especially from Nov to April up here. Especially because The Outdoors is here.

Where do you live, on a farm?

Wot? You know where i live.

Yeah, you need a 4x4 about as much as I do

There are plenty of reasons to have one. I'm not sure mine counts as a 4x4 now

0x0 maybe

We hired a Smart car on holiday in Spain. I really liked driving it as a holiday car, it felt like it really fitted in with that continental 'vibe' and felt cool buzzing along with some euro-dance-pop on the radio.

The first time I went to reverse park I stuffed it right up - the shortness really tight turning circle left caught me out a bit.

But after a go or two, it was so easy to chuck into a space, leaving parking sensors seemingly redundant after the first few trips.

£375 to tax the Merc today. Stupid ridiculous car with its big engine and high emissions. (I can't remember if I'm paying based on engine size or emissions as you get to choose whichever is cheapest for cars registered before 2010, although in this case the answer is 'both are expensive'. It worked out well for the Type-R though as its emissions were pretty horrible but its engine capacity fell into the 1800-2500 band which wasn't too bad.)

Oh yes and the specialist diagnosed another faulty parking sensor on the Merc, to take the total number of failed sensors so far to three (out of ten), which are costing the dealer £100 each plus the labour for his guys to fit them. Hopefully the other seven will break before the 'warranty' expires.

Actually having just checked the latest prices the Type-R would have been £230 to tax this year, so £375 for the Merc isn't atrocious I suppose.

Yay Merc fix! It appears that three replacement parking sensors were the charm, and the Parktronic system is fully operational, for now at least..... (It was in today to get the third replacement sensor fitted.)

So it's only taken four months and returning the car about 15 times in total for various diagnoses and fixes, but touch wood I do actually have a 100% working CLS now.

Me and the chaps at work did a rough and ready calculation and we reckon that if I'd been paying for both parts and labour for everything that's been done, the bills would total in the region of £3000, but it's not cost me a penny as it's all been done under warranty.

Of course one does have to wonder about the future with the car, as once the shield of the warranty runs out, what's to say it won't generate another £3000 worth of bills?

However, I choose to be an optimist and like to think that all the kinks have been ironed out now, and it'll be plain sailing from here on in. Either that or once the warranty runs out in two months I'll shit myself and trade it in for something else. We shall see. (There was one on Autotrader a couple of months ago that had 267,000 miles on it, so these things are clearly capable of some very big mileages.)

Anyway, I won't worry about it for now and just try to enjoy the car for a bit, since this is basically the first time it's worked properly for three months (it started to go wonky within three weeks of taking ownership, when the random limp mode problem started). It does need a decent clean though, here it is in the not exactly salubrious locale of the backings.

Well that didn't last long, it packed up again on the way to work this morning. I shall ring the dealer when he opens at 8:15am.

I love a story with a happy ending.... Oh, no.. wait. The other one.

Keep us informed Hearthly! If anything, it makes a good read and good luck with it.

Needs more sensors.

Hope you get it sorted (or see something else on his forecourt).

Cripes.

Popped back to the dealers this morning and he plugged his scanner into it, (it's not a proper Merc STAR scanner but it's much better than mine, it's like a large rubberised ipad with an OBD connector coming out of it), the car is intermittently flagging the sensor they replaced yesterday as faulty, which clearly isn't right. (When the car detects one sensor is faulty, it shuts down the whole Parktronic system.)

I could see the readout on their scanner screen, each sensor reports a value of 0-255 when it detects something in range, and as the other guy was walking around the car each of the sensors would report its value, and then at random this one sensor would stop reporting at which point the Parktronic shuts down and all the range LED bars inside the car go to the double red LED 'failed' state.

They are booking another slot with the German car specialist guy and will let me know when they can get the Merc back in for further diagnostics by him.

So in the meantime I can either enjoy red LEDs and occasional random beeping, or just disable the Parktronic system. I'll go with disabling the Parktronic system.

Don't disable it, keep it on. Every time it beeps or flashes, everyone in the car drinks three.

Is there a cliff nearby where you can park it with the handbrake off?

A Jeep Patriot would be utterly ludicrous, right?

Parts are pretty expensive in the UK, and they're a bit underpowered (and look a bit silly, IMO), but they're a good, pretty basic 4x4.

I think it looks awesome - like something from GI Joe.

The V40 is dying and I need a new car, and fancy a 4x4. Probably looking to spend up to about 5k. There are a couple of Discos nearby that I'll look at, but there aren't many sub 100k mileage ones around in that price range.

If you want something bullet-proof and really, really useful, I can't recommend the Mitsubishi L200 Warrior enough. They're superb.

Wait, you can get an L200 Trojan for that money - they've got more room in the back (although less in the "back" back).

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/ ... =p&adPos=6

Vroom vroom vroom!

nice! But on the other hand, at 110 on the clock how much trouble is it going to be?

You've got about another 100,000 to go before you need to start worrying. They're just made from huge chunks of steel, so nothing tends to break. There was a known gearbox fault with third gear, but they'll have all had that sorted by now (but if you test one shift down hard from fourth into third, and if you can it's fine).

Awesome! Thanks fella. Funnily enough, our neighbour has one I think...

last question - does the Warrior or Trojan have more space in the back seats, or about the same?

Seems an odd choice I mean I know a few people with those but they're mostly builders, rather than lawyers.

I do a lot of stuff that involves buying large quantities of timber, sand, stone etc, and even on holidays we've found that the amount of shit we take with us (including kayaks and such) has grown, and even an estate car with a roof box has not been quite sufficient sometimes. I also live somewhere that would benefit from a 4x4.

I had always had my heart set on a Land Rover Discovery (no idea why really), but anything with a lot of carrying capacity would do.

Plus the L200s look cool, man. A Ford F150 would be awesome if you could buy them for less than a bazillion pounds.

Once the garage has been built the next purchase is a Ferret armoured car...

Fair dos, I couldn't be doing with one of them as a daily driver though.

Manly names.

F150s are ludicrously big for the UK (and make anyone driving them look like a bellend). I found the driving position in the Warrior to be bizarre. You'd expect to be sat up high, like in a van, but it has low seats and shallow footwells, so it feels more like a sportscar. Very odd.

Was there enough headroom?

I think my next car will be an estate car.

Still happy with mine for now. Mate at work just gifted me 2 Toyo tyres that he had fitted last month as yesterday he had a set of 4 matched Goodyears fitted. Which is nice. It played on his OCD having mismatched pairs, well that and he span his BMW 720º down a country lane on Monday evening. (His rear tyres being the culprits rather than the Toyos on the front).

For some reason this decision is struggling to get through committee :-/