picked my vrs up last night, love the car its everything i though it would be! couple of things though the gearstick doesnt centre when its out of gear if you can understand what i mean, is there a spring or bush that wears or is this normal? other thing is what should be where the centre buttons are? got the rear heated screen/asr/fuel flap but it leaves a hole is this just a blank?

heated seats mate.

its an option.

not too sure on the gearstick tho, enjoy the car mate they are awsome fun and when you do a few things to them they are even better lol

billy

Could be a worn bush, the gearbox was totally knackered on mine when I test drove it, the dealer had it for a few days and replaced the bushes before I picked it up.

heated seats not fitted to mine put the details in my etka, no wires visable so i'm going with a blank!

There should be a plastic blank that matches the switches, not a hole, if you don't have heated seats.

Gearlever centring could be the linkage, but it's hard to diagnose for sure without seeing the car.

This could be the linkage as folks have said. This also sometimes makes it hard to get into 3rd or 5th gear. The linkage is controlled by cables that have spring loaders on them that should automatically take up the play as the cables stretch over time. These springs / cables can sometimes not do the job correctly and need adjusting manually. This involves locking the linkage arm in place, then from inside the car pull up the gear stick gater over the gear knob to expose the lower gear stick. You then need to lock the gearstick in place with a allen key or small thin screwdriver locating it through the small hole on the side of the gear surround area. Then from the engine bay, press in the 2 cable springs and release them again. You may want to spray the springs cable ends with WD40. When you have done that remove the allen key/screwdriver and then unlock the linkage arm. Hopefully you will find it has fixed the gearstick movement.

This is covered in the haynes manual very well.

I had the exactly the same problem with my 03 Vrs when it was 2 years old and 20k, turned out to be the grease on the bottom of the gearstick had dried out.

The bottom of the stick is a ball and cup set-up which acts as the pivot, this housing just happens to sit directly above the cat so gets extremely hot, melts the factory grease which then forms in a puddle in the bottom.

I took it to my local dealer (under warranty at the time) who cleaned the housing out then applied a large quantity of white spray silicone grease, the cars now 6 1/2 years old with 70k+ and the problem has never come back .