Hi.

Picked up my brand new superb two weeks ago, and got a few questions regarding maintainance. The car is built in week 8.

1. During the last weeks I have come acress quite a few neurotics urging me not to do anything with the cars exterior (Washing, polishing etc.) for quite some time, giving the paint time to toughen. I am not able to find anything adressing this particular subject in the car`s manual, so this is leading me to think that I can just go ahead and clean it.

Living in Norway, the government`s massive taxation policy makes the car quite a considerable investment,(elegance with 1.6CR setting me back 39 k £, 2.0 CR 6 k £ more) and their entusiastic orientation against taxation is only matched by their dedication in road salting and lacking road maintainance. As a result of the salting and terrible roads, my break discs are, after mere two weeks on the road, already looking like something brought up from the titanic, and I really don`t want to wait with rinsing of the gritty salt slush.

So, what do you guys reckon? can I just go ahead cleaning?

2. I recently noticed some rather grim looking scratches on the roof. Looks like a couple of wolverines have had a standoff on my roof, with circular swirls 30 cm in diameter, with straight lines leading out from it. Have no idea how this have happened, but once parking where the junior delinquents go to grab a smoke in the junior high where I work might offer an explanation.

Some of the scratches go away when rubbing firmly with a finger, leaving some kind of substance on the finger, but the majority of the scratches seem to need a harder threatment.

So, any suggestions on how to get rid of these scratches? Quick fix, or just to face 1 500 £ bill for repainting the roof?

Starting to miss my beat down passat 4M.

Thanks in advance.

Elias

Go ahead and do it - you will be fine. Collinite 476s is a good hard wax to protect the paint. I would get a polish on the roof to see if you can easily remove the marks. Something like Autoglym Super resin Polish....if not then you may need to go to a cutting compound.

Are you seriously saying that a 2.0CR is £45k?

Thanks for your reply, will have a go at polishing the roof.

Took a look at a currency converter to make sure that I was right regarding the figures.

My superb combi elegance spec with tow bar, BT hands free, bolero, rear air bags, MDI, studded winter tyres on alu, non leather seats, tinted windows, and the adaptive xenon lights actually set me back 41 810 £. And that was after a dealers discount of 2200 £.

Upgrading to the 2.0 CR 140 BHP would add another 5600 £ to the bill, as a result of the aggressive power and CO2 emissions taxation policy.

However, the GBP is historically low compared to the Norwegian Krone, and we do get 5 years warranty. Also, Elegance comes with alot as standard.

Given that this is the roads we have to travel on, http://www.vg.no/protokoll/?pid=905 (scroll for images), and the extensive salting, owning a new car entails sleepless nights.

Elias

Edited 2 April, 201115 yr by JElias

The Elegance 2.0CR 140 is £23500 in the UK! So you either earn more than us in Norway or that is just a rip off!!

Looked at the link and apart from a couple of the massive holes the roads don't look much different to the roads in the UK!!

Flooding looks a bit worse than the UK , but a LOT of UK roads are a complete mess now. I did like the pics of the bike and the guy with one foot in ahole LOL