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

plus if you ding it, you just have to claim back the excess from the booking company and they'll take forever. dont ask me how I know

Haha, I see! 🤣 Yeah, I realise that but it's just so fucking annoying. I would've booked direct through Hertz if I'd realised this was gonna happen. Lesson learned.

Anyone ordered a new BMW recently? What are the lead times like.

Wondering if I can make an m340i touring work...

And on a similar note. Anyone owned an f11 5 series? Got a bit of a hankering for an upgrade - both space and convenience wise.

Yeah, used to have an f11 520d a while back.

Was decent although rear air suspension did fail and needed replacing which wasn't cheap.

Oooof.

Been collecting the Redline series of late...

I have a few premium cars I’m hunting for at the moment but the supply to NZ is terrible and lots of new stuff, especially JDM cars is bought on mass by scalpers

We have about 40 cars designated for playing with in the “ultimate garage” we got 2nd hand

Depends on how you want to play with the costs though. Roughly speaking, we've found annual excess cover is about £40-£50, cover through the booking agency is £4-£8 a day, and from the car hire company more like £15-£25 a day.

I'm happy enough to accept that if I bend a hire car badly enough, I'll be sticking north of a grand on a credit card until the excess insurer gets round to giving me the money - but the only time I've actually made a claim (£60 for a kerbed alloy I think) they paid within a week. That seems a fair trade for saving £100 or so any time we hire a car for a week.

(And most companies pre-authorise an amount towards the excess rather than actually charging it at time of hire - I don't think I've had anyone put through a charge and then have to process a refund on return of the car for about six or seven years.)

I'm not saying I disagree with you in a general sense.

But we're talking about car rental categories. These are broad buckets.

Out of curiosity, what is the exact name/term of the level you bought? Because that's really the question - can a XC60 be lumped into "___" category?

I'd probably put an XC90 into a more luxury category TBH. But that's probably my bias based on the specs of the ones around our nursery.

They made me pay a €700 deposit before they'd hand over the keys. Utter. Cunts.

Greenmotion in FL wouldn't let us leave with our 3rd party insurance and the guy just served someone else.

The pre-charge has never been an issue for me, usually you just need a credit card. I guess the only thing is if you use the same card and spend a lot on holiday it's possible you could run out of overdraft. But we don't. I usually use amex for this as customer service support is better.

They're bullet proof, mileage is not an issue as long as it has been serviced correctly.

These cars are definitely getting more popular in the city now. especially the manual 1.0 with the crap sat nav.

Service history is good and I've seen loads with 110k and more, so I'm OK with 81k.

I wasn't bothered about sat nav, they aren't very good in recent Toyotas let alone one from 10 years ago. But...I do need to start looking at Bluetooth/hands free/USB charging options, perhaps a Pure Highway 600 would fit the bill.

See on the IQ forum a lot gets this to fix the profile of the car:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CF299HQ2/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B0CF299HQ2&pd_rd_w=lDAKz&content-id=amzn1.sym.84ea1bf1-65a8-4363-b8f5-f0df58cbb686&pf_rd_p=84ea1bf1-65a8-4363-b8f5-f0df58cbb686&pf_rd_r=69NCFYP7HEDWVCGW51DH&pd_rd_wg=vEimy&pd_rd_r=4b744d28-c761-4158-999c-2ac44ff43c44&s=electronics&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWw

Do fuck all driving so am tempted by My Miles insurance (with black box)
I did a bit of reading and warming to it. The website suggests it only charges you by how far you drive, not by how well... not that I ever speed of course.

Does anyone recommend it?
Based on the mileage I do it's about £300 cheaper than my current deal.

Greenmotion in FL wouldn't let us leave with our 3rd party insurance and the guy just served someone else.

All bets are off in the States I think, given US credit cards generally give you at least what we'd expect as the minimum cover included with the rental (ie collision and loss damage waiver, limiting liability to the £/$/€700 or 1500 or 2500 I at least grimace at whenever I sign for it), so US hire staff don't know what to do with anyone who claims alternative cover.

(My one experience with GM was absolutely fine, but one example, and in the UK)

I had a blackbox insurance once. Never made the slightest bit of difference to how we drove (was in a 4wd double cab pickup that my wife mainly drove at the time). There was an app where I could see stats, but they were very boring. At the end of the year I found a cheaper deal and they came to take it away with zero hassle. Completely painless experience.

How much is your current deal? I pay £320 fully comp limited mileage to 6000

An XC90 is more like the equivalent of a 7.5 ton truck.
Bloody horrible enormous things.

Greenmotion

They're notoriously bad, even in the UK. There's a reason they're really cheap.

But the usual trick is something like:

• Don't have space on any card for a £2.5k deposit/block? That's ok, the alternative is spending another £450 on our enhanced insurance package.
  
  

There were two separate people battling with this when I rented a car from Greenmotion.

(I get excess cover from insurance4carhire or similar, and luckily have space on my credit cards for whatever deposit they want to pre-authorise.)

My old vehicle was a v220

Funny, I can't imagine you driving a Vauxhall. Better value than a Elise.

Some Murica states thinking of bringing in a weight vehicle tax.

Drip the Sparky SUVs

Was around £550 and I do less than 1000 miles a year.

Saw this stunning 1969 Rover P5b Coupe today. I've always loved the fat stance on these, and this lowered one makes it look even better.