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

It used to be engineering, clever design and comfort rather than tech. I don't know if it still is. For example, buy a Jaguar XE and you get an extraordinarily well engineered rear suspension system which arguably they really shouldn't have wasted the money on developing. Buy a small Peugeot and you get trailing arms and a torsion bar. Merc E classes have 2nd sun visors under the main ones for when you want to put them over the side windows. Having said that, you get cost-cutting on them too. Order leather and you get plastic. You need 'Nappa leather' for the real thing.

My friends have a Skoda Fabia estate and the suspension is harsh, it clonks, it creaks. It just feels cheap and it's not comfortable. Come from a Passat (never mind an Aston!), for example, and you can tell where the cost cutting happened. However it you've never experienced that level of car you'd never know. You'd just look at the kit and go 'yep, it's got satnav, power steering, electric windows and aircon, we're good to go.'

Incidentally forum hive-mind: What is the biggest estate car in terms of luggage space?
Budget is £4500.
Currently looking at Mercedes W211 E class, Audi A6 Avant, VW Passat, Subaru Legacy. Which is biggest and what have I missed?
If you know of a good LHD one for sale over here, hit me up

Skoda superb?

Honestly if my car could park it's self I'd be annoyed

i don't lose any sleep over being able to parallel park perfectly in a rush with no adjustment required etc. each to their own of course...

This always seems to get the vote on biggest .
Some do stellar miles too

There must be a cavernous volvo still?

He had money but maybe it was just the cut out bonnet - for looks. Lol
Nicer than my rusty Golf at the time !

It was the era of aftermarket body kits, after all

a knackered one at that price...

We've a Subaru Legacy BR (5th gen) and boot is massive, takes my 65cm road or XXL 29er comfortably with saddle at full height and wheels on (although I tend to take the front off the 29er to make it easier to load)

Seller of the mk3 golf GL for £285 conveniently forgot to tell me it was a cat s so didn't end up getting it. Fuck buying a used car.

Aren't most things a bit knackered at that price? Surely you're going to get a better Superb than a Passat as they're more expensive to start with.

Maybe a Mondeo estate?

I dunno, you can definitely get examples around 5k. Will be 8-10 years old, 100-150k on the clock - maybe less if you shop around.

I was looking at Skoda estates for a while around this price mark, although admittedly I arrived at the conclusion that if that was the road I was going to go down I'd probably spend a little bit more. And then I bought a 16 year old e46 for half that instead.

From looking, the Skodas seemed better looked after than the Passats. Just my experience, but I wonder if the kind of people buying and owning Skodas were more likely to look after them.
And Octavias are so ubiquitous that you're more likely to get a reasonable deal on one/find one that has been looked after.

My dad had a superb estate the boot was huge, easily big enough to get my 56cm road bike in one go.

He also had a Passat for a bit which was decent too

Volvo V70/XC70 surely worth a look too.

We have a legacy outback which also has a huge boot

there's two on ebay atm - one with 256k miles and one (admittely - looks good value) SE with 132k. it is in that horrible brexit brown, though

maybe, but the oldest superb is what, 10 years old? they just arent old enough to find reasonable cars at that budget. there are older cars that fit the bill.

I guess so. There's a few on autotrader around 120-150k miles.

This one looks okay...

This one's only done 100k miles!

Finally, this one looks pretty clean.

There are ones on Autotrader with north of 380k miles on them so there's plenty of life left in these examples.

fair enough.

Ha, saved me doing the exact same thing. All over the country tho.

my saved search is for an auto, hence not seeing too many in that range.

it's a shame about the interior of that blue one...

I don't mind the cream / beige interior. I think it makes it look a little nicer than the black.

I’ve got a 2006 Volvo XC70, my 58cm road bike and 19” dadbike MTB both fit inside wheels-on.

I looked at a Superb, but the sloping rear and lack of flat folding seats were real turn-offs. Why does no one, not even Volvo, make slab-ended estates anymore?

Why does no one, not even Volvo, make slab-ended estates anymore?

This got me thinking.
I’ve finally solved @Dammit ‘s car/van dilemma:
https://youtu.be/ZvAPA-43lFw

So many options:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143737094388
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264882362280