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I could barely afford to put fuel in the blooming thing.

One of the guys at work bought himself a mid-life crisis Jaguar XKR and declared if he was ever over taken he always overtook the overtaker to show them who had the more powerful car.

I was reading another thread (Chuckle in your Day) just now, which had veered a little off into slagging-off BMW drivers, and it made me think about an experience (not BMW related) I had a few years ago. Some fool had driven into the back of me, so my car was off for repair and I was allowed to get a hire car while my car was being repaired. I don't know how it happened, but I found myself behind the wheel of a hired Peugeot 405 SRi. (The 405 SRi was a bit like Peugeot's Octavia vRS at the time, but obviously a fair bit slower.) However, for a young chap coming from a 1.4 Orion, the Peugeot was intoxicating. Sharp, precise steering, thrilling acceleration and excellent brakes. Well, for the couple of days I had it, it turned me into a bit of a hooligan. However I realised it had turned me into a bit of a hooligan, and said as much to my wife: "That car is a bad influence!" I often wonder if drivers of cars that are particularly good to drive get corrupted similarly, which might explain why they drive so aggressively. Aggressive driving doesn't go unnoticed by other drivers, and humans are very good at noticing patterns. I work with a guy who has a BMW 330D X-drive, which is quite a nippy car. (Even more so now he's had it remapped.) But even before he had it remapped, he usually had a story about some idiot driver who somehow got in his way on the way to work. I travel the same route as he does, (well did, before this COVID-19 malarkey) and TBH, it's a fairly uneventful drive. I wonder if he's been corrupted by that sporty car and is a more aggressive driver as a result?

My first car was a Mini 1000 in classic "Harvest Gold", as British Leyland called it. The car below wasn't mine, but mine was identical. It ran alright, but was a bit of a rust-bucket and didn't like cold starting. I mean, really didn't like cold-starting. I learned more about cars in trying to get that little b@stard started and kept going on cold mornings than I care to remember. I bought another Mini, a 1275GT, which I had a lot of fun in, then bought a Ford Orion 1.4LX. The Orion was like driving a limo in comparison with the Mini, but wouldn't do handbrake turns, which my 1275GT did exquisitely. Mine was white, not silver, but you get the idea. That two-tone paintwork made it look at bit like the 1.6i Ghia if you squinted hard, which made it cool. 😄 It was a fine car with a massive boot, but it suffered from leaking valve stem oil seals, which meant a lot of smoke on start-up. After that, it was a Rover 420SLi, which with Rover's 2.0L twin-cam 16V engine felt like it went like a rocket at the time. I adored that car, fake wooden trim and all This was a car that benefited considerably from Honda's input to Rover. Then I had a Seat Ibiza SXE TDi, which was very red, and was lovely until my wife stuffed it into the back of some poor sod in an Audi. After that came another Ibiza, a TDi 110 Sport like the one below, which I pre-ordered and bought new. Around this time, we each had a car, so it was a bit confusing as to who owned what, as we chopped and changed a bit as to who drove which car. Anyway, after a wastegate fail on the 110 Ibiza, with big bills looming we swapped that for another Ibiza TDI. I thought it was an FR, but it was actually a TDI 130PD Sport A very similar car to the one here. We got a stunning deal on the 110 Sport p/x and the 130 Sport purchase, which we were very happy about. The 130 Ibiza was a fabulous car until my wife wrote it off by losing control of it on a motorway when she hit a puddle at speed. After that I gave her my Mondeo and bought myself a nicer Mondeo (which I've just parted with.) She wrote off my Mondeo and found herself in a Fabia 1.2 punishment car. And now she's in her Fiesta. Literally in it, she's just gone shopping.

Pro-rata is something a lot of people seem to have trouble with.

Feminist activists campaigned long and hard for women to be charged the same as men for car insurance, so that's just a case of giving feminist activists what they demanded, not necessarily what women wanted. The mother of stupidity is always pregnant, and the offspring can be male or female.

Welcome! That's a very nice car you have there.

Original question prompted by this. VEH0220: Licensed cars by make, model and engine capacity: Great Britain and United Kingdom (ODS, 19MB) I was trying to see just how many Octavia SE L TSI 190's are registered in the UK. (Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/veh02-licensed-cars)

AHHHH! Of course it is! Thanks for pointing that out. Geez! I really am geting slower as I get older. 😄

It is a big car.

She's much better now she's realised she isn't the best driver and drives within her limitations. No crashes since she's been in less powerful cars.

Anyone know what the "S-A" stands for?

I really like Q-cars/sleepers, and those Teslas fly under the radar of a lot of people. (I chose that particular video as I love the clip of Yianni screaming in tune with Montserrat Caballé singing "O mio babbino caro". That cracked me up when I first saw it. 😄)

The Chevette was my wife's first car. We saw it up on a dodgy car-dealers pitch for £129, and I knocked him down to £125. It needed about £60 of welding to pass an MOT, but it ran well and we both really liked it. The brakes were appallingly bad, with no servo assistance, so every time you braked you mentally crossed your fingers too. My wife delighted in telling me she could get 80MPH out of it, which was frankly horrifying. With a dual wishbone front suspension setup, I found it drove really nicely. Rear wheel drive meant a nice gear-change and tail-happy fun in the wet at quite low speeds. Eventually my wife wrote the car off by drifting over to the wrong side of the road driving back from the vets, while trying to catch a pet rat which had escaped its container. She hit a centre refuge kerb with her nearside front wheel, and caused enough damage for me to scrap the car. She didn't get a replacement car for some time. Happily, the rat was unharmed.

My wife wrote off two cars within 12 months. An earlier Mondeo, which I rather liked, and a Seat Ibiza FR TDi 130PD which went like a rocket and I adored. As a result, I made her drive a punishment car for about 5 years. This was a 1.2 Skoda Fabia which had no radio and wind-up windows. It was quite slow, and it forced her to have to think ahead, and not just floor it "To get out of trouble". The Fabia was actually quite a nice little car to chuck about, but she hated it with a passion. (It was surprisingly bad on fuel economy, and would run the battery flat if left unused for a few days. Always good for a laugh. ) She's now in what she regards as a probationary vehicle, a 1.4TDCi Fiesta, which she actually quite likes. I'm not sure about letting her drive Billy. Coincidentally, we once had a car we'd ironically named "The Beast". It was a 1.3 Vauxhall Chevette.

There used to be a saying "Buy at 2 sell at 5" when it came to buying a car. (Maybe that still applies, maybe not.) The reasons I change my car are:- 1) I sense big bills incoming for an older vehicle. 2) My wife crashes the car. 3) A highly desirable car becomes available. (Only happened once) 4) I get bored with the car. (Normally requires reason 1 or 3 to prompt me actually changing the vehicle.) I bought by Octavia because of a combination of 1 & 4. I'm curious to hear how long other people keep their cars, and what prompts them to change.

My wife's Fiesta diesel without DPF is £20/year to tax, and I suspect it is almost certainly less "green" (depending on what you think green means) than our new Octavia with cat and PPF, which is £150/year to tax. The whole system is a mess.

Well I'm not an expert, but it looks okay to me and I'm happy enough with the result to take it away.

Thanks, I do hope so. I've had 4 VAG cars before, and they've generally been okay, once they're sorted out.

I'm open to all ideas, TBH. I agree with the principle that simply owning a polluting car shouldn't incur a heavy penalty. Driving it a lot and creating the pollution is the problem. Maybe a flat pollution allowance be given to every car, and then once you exceed your allowance, the cost ramps up? The goal of this would be to force people who use their cars a lot, into efficient low-pollution vehicles. Not sure what to do about commercial vehicles though, not really considered that.

Working out the numbers is the complicated bit because I was hoping to come up with something that could be retrospectively implemented and still be fair. I don't want to have to "frig" the system to get sensible numbers.

Thank you, so do I.

An update for anyone who's interested. Spoke to the salesman yesterday who told me their car valet had had to take the rest of the week off for personal reasons. (Seems a bit cryptic, but none of my business, I suppose.) However they do now have cover from another valet who will have the car ready for collection on Thursday afternoon. So we'll see. (Meanwhile, my beloved old Mondeo goes to its new owner tonight.)

Thank you for the heads up on that, Dan.

I'd like a 360° camera system.