Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

I'm waiting for January - when the T8 is released.

Fucking ace. Is it sunny tomorrow?

No :-(

But it's sunny on Saturday when I'm at Llandow.

Tomorrow I'll be sliding my way through the south of England with my proper semi slicks on wet roads

I've taken to driving due South until I hit the A272, then heading West to Winchester, much nicer than M3 or A3.

I'm still a bit at sea over this leasing vs PCP business.

If the lease is for 24 months and the initial rental is variable - i.e. you can choose between 1 month and 12 months - am I correct in thinking that if one were to choose a 12 month initial payment you'd then pay the monthly figure from month one as well?

Or would you pay it from month 13 to 24?

Makes rather a significant difference.

Any recommendations for where to buy decent quality number plates?

The lease terms will tell you. Usually something like:

3+23
6+35

See so many cars these days with no rear lights on, and then you pull along side and see fronts sort-of are. Is this a DRL thing?

Seems a bit counterproductive if it makes people more likely to drive without switching their actual lights on.

This is for an example V90 (not one I would order, I would point out):

Your price*
Personal lease including servicing and maintenance
Monthly rental: £508.67
Initial rental: £6,104.04
Contract length: 24 Months
Miles per annum: 5,000 Miles

Which doesn't use that terminology, but would appear to be 12+24?

You would therefore pay just over 19k during those two years, which includes VED, servicing, tyres and so forth, on a ~45k car.

12+23, the initial rental is month one, then 23 more after that. So the total cost is £508.67 * (12 + 23).

£500 a month for 5k miles a year with £6k upfront seems like madness.

£17,803.45 therefore.

EDIT - @hoops, yes, I agree.

I've just never looked at this sort of thing, trying to get a feel for it.

It does indeed.

ISTR I had a quote for the big Tesla at less than that.

£1.73 per mile before you've even put any fuel in it...?

And a PHEV Outlander is about half that.

Model S 75 would be £11 down and £463/month (48 months), £535 for 36 months.

I'm not warming to this leasing business.

Im sure this whole craze of leasing brand new cars every two years is going end in tears some day soon. It's all based on what pretty much boils down to a Ponzi Scheme that gambles on the second hand market remaining strong in years to come, (which it obviously won't be if the market is continually flooded with brand new lease cars that get handed back to the dealer after 2 years).....its gonna fuck the market up proper some time soon if you ask me..... a la negative equity mortgages in 2008.

Yes, that's exactly the conclusion I had reached. I'd rather buy a car that's a bit newer than the Volvo and which I could sell when I wanted to.

I looked into leasing when I was considering a brand new Golf R two years back, but walked away as it all just seemed like the fresh out of university sales guy was just trying to confuse me with a load of number he didn't really understand himself just to get me to sign on the dotted line.

If you think values are going to drop Shirley a lease is safest cos you can just hand the car back at the end?

The only loser will be the leasing company.

Peep this

'zackly. It's not like a mortgage because the risk of the residual price of the vehicle being less than anticipated lies with the lender. I'm not saying it won't all end in tears, but it'll be systemic rather than personal tears.

Oh yeah for sure, I think the person leasing the car seems to be pretty safe here, as opposed to the negative equity fuck up... I think it's just the whole system the manufacturers have created to make it look like the most affordable option to buyers that's the problem, and just isnt sustainable in the long run and will eventually lead to an over saturated market of perfectly good 2 year old cars that aren't worth any money.

I'm just personally not down with the whole idea of it, as it seems like a bit of a scam to enable manufactures to make it look like they are doing much better than they actually are.

I suspect I'm not helping by wanting a large capacity petrol engine in an estate body - always a recipe for rock solid residuals.