Aspman

I've punted the RaRo after 2yr and 11k miles. Some big bills were coming up despite it being completely reliable over that 24 months and if I'm honest it was a lot of money to be locked up in a car that I appreciated but didn't really love. It's been swapped for... a 2016 Suzuki Jimny. Really. Dealer made a decent offer for the Raro which involves giving me a wodge of cash back, buyer already lined up. Jimny will just be for the winter weather and shooting days, cash back will go towards soemthing interesting, probably fast and german but maybe a bit more left field. Wee 4x4 was low mileage and mint condition. Being sold as approved used despite the age. Getting new disks and pads then it'll be swapped on this week. Get some knobblies on it soon.

Need some spikes on the wheels for Blair 😉 Neighbour had a good experience with Cazoo but not sure if they operate with cars that sort of price. In general I'd suggest avoiding anything French, it's not a joke they just don't last that well. I had a 2004 Renault and it basically disintegrated over the 4yr I had it, and that was from new. Anything that age will break and need repaired so aim for something that is easy to get parts for and plenty people know how to fix. VAG group is always a good bet there. Toyota can last well into old age and high miles but repairs are a little more expensive.

Couldn't tell you much about installation really, ours was part of the build spec. But really an ASHP needs to be the core of a building design, you decide that for a heating system THEN you build the house around that. Houses need to be ultra insulated and very draft proof which contradicts directly with clean air regulations from planning. So we have lovely thick double gazing with bloody great holes in them for air. ASHP needs to be coupled with a mechanical heat recovery system to allow the air to circulate without loosing energy. I'm currently trying to figure out how to storm proof bathroom extractors for winter. We had the pump serviced recently which might help efficiency, the engineer spotted that the flow rates on the manifold did not match specification. He's corrected that. Also spotted that the system doesn't have enough antifreeze in it. Brilliently these systems use a non-toxic antifreeze which is about 4x the price of glycol and they need about 170l of it. We'll need to put in another 40-70l to get it up to spec (£300). Ther service itself was £200 +£100 for the tuning work. In teh summer it's actually been cheap to run with the heatig off, it produces hot water very efficiently, We get a tank (150l) for about £1.50. But genuinely when my fix deal goes our winter bills will be terrifying, we could easily see £1000 a month. I'll be buying more wood for the log burner soon. What will really help is decoupling the electricity price from gas. We are a renewable only customer but see no benefit from that. ASHP will always seem stupid until the price of electricity starts to match gas, the the efficiencies in the sysem might actually start to make sense for people.

Covid not only shut down factories making computer chips it drove up the the demand for equipment especially mobile kit like laptops. There is still a massive demand and shortage there. It takes months to bring a chip factory back up to running speed and years to comission a new one so when there are shortages they tend not to get resolved quickly. As the global economy starts to tank over the next 18 months demand will start to drop again and chips will become available for cars that no one can afford to buy.

RaRo will need fed soon, not looking forward to that. I've alos droped mileage, lucky if I'm doing 3k a year now.

TBH I've stopped worrying about it, the difference is probably tiny and not worh fretting about. Nevre had nor have I ever heard of any problems with stater motors etc by this. I turn it off when I'm in busy moving traffic since I don't want the hesistation of the engine having to restart if I'm trying to dart out.

Used to be a 60 as well

My old 335d. Not very special I guess but it was the best car I've ever owned. Brutally fast, felt a bit murderous in the corners and pretty tame to run. For my SWMBO she loved, loved the first car she bought herself. It was a Mini Coupe JCW, her brothers car from new. She was gutted when it had to go because we needed a back seat. She loved it so much that now we have the space we've just bought another near identical coupe to keep as a summer future classic.

I think a bit like music you are defined by your era. My love of cars comes from watching films like Cannonball run, Smokey and the Bandit etc. So the sounds of a big V8 is evocative to me. People 15yr younger might prefer the sound of high powered 4s like the Scoobies and Evos of the 90s. Maybe if your tastes are being defined now you'll find the insipid whine of a Tesla sends shivers down your spine. Or maybe you just won't care about cars at all. I think the golden age of motoring is past. Cars are (and have been for 20yr) becoming increasingly bland and sold based upon their connection to you phone. I really think I need to get a big silly V8/10/12 before they are all gone or banned

I think by some margin the Allegro wins in the looks department. Even in turd bown

Yeah totally. Honestly it's got all the design quality of my daughters Little Tikes Cozy Coupe

Not seen a Roller in the metal but I have seen a few Bentegas, Yep fugly but not iX fugly. I honestly think the Rexxon is less offensive.

Didn't even need a coat hanger, A good whack on the lock with anything solid and it would fall in the door and you could stick your finger in the hole to unlock the door. Screwdriver and a brick worked well too.

The BMW iX I saw one today, genuinely a jaw dropping car. Mine dropped anyway, I doubt I have ever seen anything so catastrophically ugly in real life. I've seen a few new M4s and M3s now and the shock is wearking off on them but this, this....

Just make sure it's got a front cover. The rest is more to do with aesthetics

Argh AC stickers, George you'll give me twitches!! A mate of mine lost it in an AC forecourt when they kept putting stickers on his car when it was in for warranty work. It was a Fiat Brava so it was in quite a lot.

On a private road of course

Don't talk crap George you have to drive over or under them! Covis-19 is too fat to fly and poor at tunnelling but good at turning left and right

I thought Top Gear were able to show you can go too fast for a GATSO, but that it was about 165mph.

I used to see mine around occasionally, somtimes this was annoying. A Ford Focus I sold on earlier than I should, thinking the mileage was a bit high, I saw regularly for about another 10yr. Clearly it took its miles well. They rest have just disappeared. I've used a private plate for the last 15yr or so remembering the plates as I sold them has always been a bit hard. I assume they were used and scrapped as MOTs got too hard.

In the end it's a car not a person. Maybe I'm lucky that I've never really felt all that attached to cars or houses. or objects in general The next car is always more interesting to me.

Same question as always... Can I legally get in the back of the car drunk as a skunk and have it drive me home? If not, it's not a self driving car IMHO.

This is pretty much what I've always done in my autos. For most of them the auto stop/start kicks in anyway so the car isn't pulling constantly. My autos haven't been DSG so there has been no clutch to worry about.

CAr manufacturers have seen how phone makes have been able to con the public for years that they need a new phone every year. Getting you to do the same with your car is pretty much the dream scenario for them. They've tried their best with various contract hire and PCP deals over the years but never quite got it to the car as a subscription art that the phone guys have. But now the arse is falling out of this market with phones, many more people are just looking at phones as white goods and wondering what they are getting for their £1000. Cars ahve always been seen as white good by many, so the manufacturers are trying to climb onto a cycle that that has ended for phones. Short sighted but I'm sure theya re seeing the electric conversion of cars as a what to drive the paradime shift. It'll fail, but they'll be trying to force us into it for the next 10yr anyway. Just you wait you'll be seeing BAAS and CAAS soon (Battery as a service, Car as a service ). The *AAS will be familiar to all the IT guys.

I think worries around potential or actual loss of resale value were the driving force for many claims. I think post 'fix' many had an argument around loss of performance and economy which would potentially mean that the car was mis-sold in the first place i.e. when operating legally the performance of the car was far below what was advertised or promised.