Be Excellent To Each Other

What about one of those very worst case scenarios where someone is killed or something? I don't know what sort of checks the police routinely do on vehicles in those circumstances.

No really, I really mean it, fully in favour.

Honestly not sure, they'd need to compare the afr map to a standard one I'd imagine. Not convinced they'd think to check or claim it was of consequence even if they did find out.

That's what would make me a bit uneasy. There's also the insurers, would they still have to pay out the third party damages if you killed or maimed someone in a car that had been modified without telling them or would they pay out but then come after you for it? Obviously that's very unlikely but those unlikely scenarios are the whole reason insurance is mandatory in the first place.

If the insurers ask "is your car modified in any way?" and then say "your insurance is invalid if you lied" then to my mind it's very clear cut what happens if you get caught. You can debate the likelihood of that, but nothing about any contact with an insurance company makes me think they're running a charity that would pay out on stuff they're not obliged to.

Good point.

You may as well spend your insurance premium on modding the fuck out of your car then if it's going to be invalid anyway.

They'll find a way to weasel out of it any way.
I drove a 1.6 Capri for a couple years, it was a heavily modified 2.9 V6 and got stopped by the cops a lot, they never checked so therefore everyone's safe and my experience guarantees that somehow.

In my life I've been involved in (I think) four collisions that required the insurance to be notified, and they paid out correctly 100% of the time.

Only cos you followed the stupid rules. Like an idiot.

One of my pet peeves is people that modify cars and then don't notify their insurance/DVLA as appropriate. Every time I see a car on eBay that has had an engine upgrade and says in the listing "still registered as a 1.2 so cheap insurance!" I report it and get it removed.

It's irresponsible, obviously illegal, and I wish the police and insurance companies cracked down on people doing it.

It's really easy, though, to buy a Rover 25 with 84 powers and misdiagnose rough idling and replace the throttle body which makes the engine make 104 powers by accident, though. And of it was idling rough, you'd think it was all better and fine. By accident

People should do the same with car dealers who say "this car is sold without a warranty ".

I'm pretty sure that as long as the car is described accurately they're fine. If they tell you why exactly there is no warranty, say the gearbox is a rusted heap lying next to the car and you buy it anyway then you can't come back wailing about your statutory rights over major mechanical defects.

What if it's had a brake upgrade? Or they've whipped the rear prop off a 4x4 to make it FWD?

The DVLA and your insurer should still be informed.

I once bought a car that was a hatchback but the log book said it was a saloon. I got it changed pretty sharpish.

s'not really any different, is it? OK, so the first case there is making the car "better", but you could say that about many mods.

Imagine if said brake upgrade failed and the car went barrelling into a huge crowd of people. If you hadn't reported that brake upgrade to the insurers, they'd almost certainly refuse to pay out and you would soon find yourself on the hook for whatever legal, medical and compensation bills that massive crowd of people generated.

No excuse for not reporting IMO.

Cut and shut standards are slipping.

We went to jaguar land rover and sat in an epace, a Disco Sport, an xf sportbrake and for completeness an evoque.

The epace boot is basically as big as the fpace one, somehow (we looked in the back of one, but it's way too massive and a bit melty to bother testing). The evoque is a proper TARDIS of a vehicle but still an evoque.

The disco sport wins in every sensible aspect but not looks, comfort (epace S is somehow nicer than disco HSE) or being rwd by default.

The xf sportbrake is, thank fuck, not available in petrol-auto-AWD which is the only acceptable version and that's probably a fucking good job or we'd be having to buy two instead of one Jag.

We should be testing an epace p250 once the demonstrator is PDId and fuck it, why not an xf sportbrake of some stupid diesel variety while we're there.

And maybe an f-type svr. I mean if they're going to park two of the fucking things next to the bogs what do they expect.

How similar are the evoque and disco sports?

Quite but not. Hard to quantify. The disco feels... Softer.

Evoque and epace share a lot, like shit rear visibility, but the disco sport is as you'd imagine from the outside, a lot more glass to look out of, especially in the rear.

In terms of leg room front and back, space against the door and headroom, they're all much of a muchness - the evoque must have a huge amount of sheet metal to hide the space in the short windows.

We both quickly came to the conclusion the evoque is surprising but still a definite no, whereas the epace and disco are much more about spec, money and how sensible we can bring ourselves to be.

Hey, I'm not even mentioning the 300hp engine I'm totes being sensible!

Yeah about that

I don't think you're doing it right.

Sadly hacking up the 101 through traffic is never any fun. But I’m doing ~500 miles on the weekend through some very quiet stretches of Northern California. I have high hopes.

I'm sure once you get it in 9th and stick the cruise control on 55 it'll be everything you dreamed.

I feel so much better about my Merc only getting 25 average now.

Also note the tank is noticeably not full any more. I've only driven about 20 miles...

Also also: where it says "V8" in that screen it sometimes says "V4" because the engine just thinks to itself "oh hey, you're cruising and don't need power so I'll just shut half the cylinders down, nbd." You can't tell and they come back at once if you give it more throttle. It's witchcraft.

Heh. That’s been on cars for 15 years, particularly V8 and above. What’s truly astonishing is even with it how shit the fuel economy is.

The M5s that I had were programmed to not show lower than 7.0 mpg on the average - is that the same with this do you reckon or do you think you could get it lower?

I dunno, on the weekend I’ll be on some empty roads and I’ll see what I can do.

The trip computer has a lap timer! And a g-forece bubble display!

I watched Baby Driver on the plane and then this morning I tried to merge into traffic while turning right on a red light in a cherry red muscle car while listening to Bellbottom.

Car gets pretty squirmy.

This was a bit different. On the way to sledging

Fuel economy update!

Demonstration of the non-existent rear view. I think this thing was designed by someone who hates glass. The forward view is pretty narrow too.

It's like driving a Cylon helmet

Hah! Yes.

13.7 is a bit better. That's just slightly worse than the UK Mustang.

How much right-wing talk radio can you tolerate before you cause an accident? My record is 32 minutes, including adverts.

I'm not a big car nut, I do like the look of this Countach, although it looks like something from the old Screamer game.

It's still all urban traffic so far (as the averaged speed shows.) I'll get it out on the open road tomorrow.

Oh, fuck any radio that isn't NPR.

Remember the car accident my wife had the other week? Well, as suspected the car has been written off.

The insurance people called today and offered me £2400 for the car but I said that's not enough. I plucked a figure out of the air and said I was expecting around £3200.

They're going to call me back next week. Is it normal to haggle with insurers like this? I've never had a car written off before.

Have a look on autotrader for similar make model and mileage as a guide.

Not unusual, sadly. The usual response is "please direct me to a car dealership within 30 miles where I can buy another car of the exact same spec, year, and mileage for this money. Oh, you can't? Then fuck off and give me more money."

Yeah last time I had to do this we both put in the same search on autotrader and came to a fair agreement.

Yeah, get some examples of cars as close to your old spec as you can on Autotrader / Parker’s and day that’s what you expect.

The dearer ones obv.

Yes, we had this when ours was stolen and used Parkers, too. I think you can subscribe to their website for a month or just get the app which gives access forever (check, though, I may have that wrong) for about the same amount. It’s handy to have when looking for a car. Russell got a fair whack of money off our new car because he had the app on him and basically pointed it at the dealer and went ‘I want it for this much’.

Helen's insurer tried to write her mx5 off (though they never actually admitted that's what they were doing, copart had to tell us themselves they were salvage not repair) because it was worth less then the minor fill and paint it needed on the rear quarter when someone hit it while parked.

When demonstrated that autotrader averaged over 5k they changed their minds.

Y'know, I'm really weirdly annoyed that Jag won't do the petrol estate xf in AWD, but will the saloon. It's not like we can afford more than one new car. Or probably even one when it comes down to it, but if we could it's for Helen and she wants a small suv.

I remember the days when I'd be annoyed that it's the inline 6 I couldn't have, except I wouldn't even be interested because it's a V8 I want, and here I am moaning about AWD 4 cylinders