Puddenchucker

No, its's not. The VQ35DE engine was designed by, and is built by, Nissan in Japan with no input from Renault. Since Renault took a controlling stake in Nissan, they have 'borrowed' this engine for use in the Vel Satis & Avantime. Don't believe everything Mr Clarkson says on TopGear.

I've got the GT pack, with the standard 18" wheels. Common problems are: 1) Front Tyre "Feathering" This is a problem, mainly on early cars, where by the inside edges of the front tyres develop a strange wear pattern which results in a lot of noise when braking at low speed. It affects different cars at different mileages and some not at all. Revised suspension/tracking settings and different spec of Bridgestone tyre is Nissan's answer (covered under warranty). As yet the jury is still out as to whether this has cured the problem. 2) Left speaker cutting out The Bose sound system on the GT cars can develop an intermittent problem, which results in the LH speakers(s) cutting out (on CD only - radio is fine). As yet Nissan (or Clarion, who make the head-unit) don't seem to have found a fix. 3) Soft paint The front of the car seems particularly susceptable to stone-chipping. As a result many owners have fitted some kind of paint protection (Paint-shield, Armourfend etc.) 4) Seat leather There have been a few reports, again, mainly on early cars, of the leather on the drivers seat side cushions wearing quickly. 5) Clutch A few people have had clutches going poof (and taking the flywheel with them) after only a few thousand miles. I'm not aware of anyone persuading Nissan to cover this under warranty in this country. 6) Dealer service The dealer network is a bit variable, some are excellent, some fall well short of the expected standard. 7) Speedlimits You'll have problems sticking to them Don't let these points put you off though. Generally, the 350Z is a fast, fun, and reliable. It also sounds fantastic. There are plenty of tuning and upgrade bits available, if that's you thing. The only other thing to be aware of is that a mildly face-lifted version has just gone on sale in the USA and Japan. There's no word yet as to when it will be going on sale in the UK, but My guess would be early spring 2006. Log on to 350zuk to find out more.

Maybe I need my eyes tested' date=' but the car(s ?) in those two sets of photos look identical to me. Also, they're the same photos as on the German Audi site: www.audi.de Shooting Brake

I've got one. In blue. And I ike it They're good cars, but not without problems. Are you thinking of buying new or used?

Well, my PC is alive again after spending most of the day fixing the thing . In short absolutley nothing worked as far as trying to recover the system with the existing hardware. Even trying to restore the system using the XP installation disk didn't work & trying to install XP again resulted in a 'XP could not detect a hard-disk' error! :eek: So, plan C. Disconect existing faulty disk, install new disk (bought from PC World this very morn). Install XP Pro on new disk. PC is then operational. Reconnect original disk as a secondary drive. This is then detected by the 'new' operating system on the new disk during boot-up. It says that there are a few errors and that the disk needs to be checked - 2 and a half hours later the PC has finished checking/restoring the original disk. I then salvage what I can of my files -(e-mails, favorites, plus all my photo's, office docs etc) fortunately these see to have survived intact, by copying them on to the new hard disk (and to an external HDD I have). I then remove the new HDD and re-instate the original HDD as the primary drive and boot-up the system. After some more error checking XP finally starts-up. Yay! :woohoo: However, all is still not well as my user profile is corrupt and the system refused to run at anything more than 640x480 resolution as my video card isn't detected and the AGP driver is missing or corrupt. So spend more time trying to find and fix drivers from install disks and internet. :confused: To no avail. Then I remember, I did a full system back-up about 2 weeks ago . So, I dig this out and decide to go for broke and restore this, with the 'overwrite existing files even if newer' box ticked. A few nervous :nervous: minutes as the PC shuts down and reboots..... Yee-ha. :woohoo: :hooray: Hey-nonny-nonny. It lives. My user profile works and I running at the full 1600x1200 reolution. All I have to do then is copy the salvaged files from the external HDD on to the disk and I'm done. I still have no idea what caused this problem, but with in the last 14 hours I have swapped hard drives about 20 times and rebooted/started up about 40 times. It has not been fun, but it has been a learing experience. Now its :dtp: time.

Not as such. Yesterday evening Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) locked up. I hit log-off and the system logged-off as normal, no error or warning messages. I then immediately logged back in and everything appeared to be OK. I did a bit more work and surfing then shut the system down, again nothing unusual happened. I switched the PC on a couple of hours later and that's when the problems first started.

Yes. Other than MS security patches & updates the OS has not be modified/upgraded.

My home PC seems to have lost the will to live. It refuses to boot-up. I switch it on, and it starts to boot then I get the error message: ...the following file is missing or corrupt: system32\drivers\isapnp.sys (The OS is XP Pro SP2) If I try to use the recovery disk, it looks like it may be about to fix the problem, then I get the B.S.O.D and a warning about protecting hardware. Is there anything else I can try or is the Hard-drive kaput?

There was a study done a few years ago that estimated that there were, on average, 80-90 spiders per square metre in the UK. The area of the UK is approx. 241590 Sq. Km, so there are approx. 20,535,150,000,000 spiders in this country. :eek:

As far as I'm aware the only time a dealer can legitimately keep hold of your car is if you owe them money for work carried out and/or parts supplied/fitted.

Just goes to show that having money does not necessarily equate to having good taste...

The most popular car, in terms of numbers sold, is the Toyota Corolla according the the Guiness book of records at 24,986,607 and counting..... VW Beetle is in 2nd place with over 21M, then the Model T at 15.5M

Has anyone not considered that stretch limo's are, effectively, a cut & shut? The 'donor' car is cut in half, a few extra feet of body are inserted and then the front and back ends are then welded on. The point is that welding two, or more, bits of cars together is not necessarily dangerous or illegal, if it's done properly and the owners/buyers know exactly what they're getting.

A 'Q' plate is usually issued if the exact date & origin of manufacture cannot be confirmed. Kit cars and some imports can fall into this category. A bit more info from the DVLA here

Any oil that is rated as VW 500.00 or 502.00 will be fine. These will usually be 10w-40 or 5w-40.

I need to buy some CR123 Batteries for various electrical gizmos. High street prices are, well, high. e.g. Argos

The US Octane number is calculated differently to the Euro Octane number: Euro numbers are RON (Research Octane Number) only. The US ratings are an average of MON (Motor Octane Number) and RON figures: (MON + RON)/2 and are typically 5 lower than the European RON only number. i.e. Euro 95 Octane is approx USA 91 Octane.

There's a bit about Pischetsrieder's statement in Autocar. They say that what he was trying to get across, was that upmarket 'premium' brands need to offer 'better-differentiated' products from their main-stream siblings. Why pay

Renault 18TS - Indestructable engine, bio-degradable body. Vauxhall Cavalier (Mk2) 1.6L - Very reliable, very dull. Toyota MR2 GT - Possibly the best car I've ever owned. Just needed more power. Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo - Fantastic car, and very well built & reliable. Honda S2000GT - Awsome engine, but overall just a bit of a disappointment. Vauxhall Cavalier (Mk3) 1.8LS Auto as runabout to keep the S2000 off the road in winter. Currently: Skoda Octavia 2.0 Elegance Auto - Can't fault it Nissan 350Z GT - did someone say oversteer?

When AutoExpress did their 2003 Tyre-Test (I never throw car mags away) they found that the difference in rolling resistance between the best and the worst caused about a 6% increase in fuel consumption. Those that had the highest rolling resistance were those that were optimised for wet weather such as the Goodyear Ventura.

For that money you could buy a new M5 for £62,705 (5.0 V10 500bhp 0-60 4.6, 0-100 9.8) then pay someone to debadge it, fit the bumpers from a 520d and derestrict it (200+mph) and have something more anonymous.

Or to 5ive-0

I used to own an S2000 and pretty much agree with everything in that evo article. The engine is fine if you just want to trundle along in traffic, and is awesome when you take it out to 9K and thrash the pants off it. The 'problem' is that the mid range is a bit lacking, so overtakes can lead to the odd 'moment' if you're not in the V-TEC zone and something appears coming the other way. Having said that frequently changing up or down a gear or three, isn't a problem as the S2K has one of the best gearboxes of any car currently on sale. As for the handling, I never had any problems and that included driving it on snow :eek: on several occasions.

Anyone know anything about ants? I found a whole load of these things scuttling about my driveway. They're a lot bigger than the normal black or red ants that are usually living in my garden. These are dark brown with light bands, or stripes, on the abdomen and a pale yellowish-brown underneath. Anyone know what sort they are?

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup