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

a couple of small issues with this little fella in the last few weeks. new accelerator cable and new starter motor drive switch. guys at Prioetti sorted without any fuss.

and the little guy has got me and the missus away as hoped for Easter. with shit loads of smiles all the way

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Anyone know what Mercedes this is, never seen one before. Like a Morris Traveller on roids.

Dat ass (the car one, its an old Bristol)

Woah!

Beautiful

Baddass

Just a (non rusty) set of indicators and the right length rivets for the headlight covers away from the front end being sorted.

I had a crack at the roundels and fucked it, too.

The inside is primed, ready for paint and the final fit of the cage.

Steering/wipers/dash next...

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Anyone have the gadget that crimps the lead endbit onto brake cables?

Parked outside my mums house this morning; good Easter roadtrip vehicle

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Some lovely cars there, but I am especially enjoying the fact the guy getting into the Bond Bug is cracking up

Definitely wouldn't recommend overpaying to "build equity" - put it in your savings instead.

My wife has a Mini Cooper Clubman which is currently £5,000 in negative equity a year before the contract ends - I'm not bothered, we'll hand it back and walk away.

PCP is great because the risk is on the finance company rather than you - even if the car is worth less than the GMFV (balloon / guaranteed minimum future value) at the end, as long as the vehicle is in a condition commensurate with the age and mileage it's not your problem

...this is also the reason why there are some used car bargains out there for a "cash buyer" as the manufacturers are propping up the new car market.

@TGR companies will do up to 30k a year, just pick what will suit you as best you can, but don't stress too much - the penalty for going over is usually about 7p a mile so even if you went 10k over on mileage you're only looking at a penalty of £700

Thanks for that. Re. Leaving the agreement when the value is less than expected, someone mentioned that this may result on a black mark against you when a credit check is done. Not sure if this is accurate info.

I don't have personal experience but I can't imagine that being true because the minute you drive a car off the forecourt, it's lost value, so you're in negative equity from day 1. I think the GFV doesn't count until the end of the contract period so ending the agreement early is costly.

You are probably right. Whoever told me that said that of you get another car there was no issue.

I originally bought my Fabia on PCP when i got my first "real" job out of university and needed a car having not owned a daily driver for years. PCP worked out great because the initial deposit was low (1%), the repayments were affordable, interest rate was reasonable (3.6% iirc) and it came with 3 years free servicing included.

At the end of the term i had positive equity over market value, decided to just pay the final value of the car outright and keep it. That was 2 years ago, it's just about at break even point now as far as i can tell, but i'll probably run it until something catastrophic breaks

Just to be clear as I’m a bit dim. At the end of the term your car was valued higher than market value, so you paid the final amount to buy the car outright. Now, some time later, your car has depreciated to what is current market value.
Have I got that right?
Also, would you go for PCP again?

When i got to the end of the deal, Skoda sent me a letter saying the agreed final value was £6.5k, they were selling on autotrader at £8.5k+ for the same car, similar mileage and history.

So i paid the remaining 6.5k, bought it outright and have run it for 2 years and it's now worth about 6.5k-7k.

I think PCP is really good if you need a car that's an affordable deposit with affordable monthly repayments - it suited my financial situation at the time, but i wouldn't use it again personally as i'm in a different situation compared to then. I'd probably try and buy something 3yrs old outright.

Thanks. My options are PCP or maybe something 3 to 5 years old - make and model dependent etc.

I would say look at PCH but the market is pretty poor at the moment in terms of good deals. Only decent deals I've seen recently are on Volvo V90/S90s

Does the PCP deal you've looked at come with any element of free servicing or anything? It's worth looking at how much an annual service might cost you and how close to needing a major service the cars you're looking at are.

Totally, in terms of smiles per miles if you get the grins before you've even gotten in to do battle in London traffic, you've done something right.

And the dude has clearly colour matched his T-shirt to his car, that's full commitment right there, makes me think he must be a cyclist too :)

My mates have the BMW ones, £600 for servicing added to the cost. Small service is around £360 apparently so it makes sense to take it if it’s a brand new car. One year old car doesn’t make sense as you only have to get one service in the three years. Their servicing costs are expense - approx £110 per hour.

Yeah a lot of new new cars have long life servicing that’s a single service in 3 years. That’s the only thing that’s cost me since I bought mine outright is it needed it’s first major service (£330) and then a cam belt/water pump at 5 years (£750). Fortunately I got my dads staff discount on the latter as he works at the dealership

I don't care what the schedule says, I'm changing the oil every 5,000 miles or 1 year, whichever comes first. I think oil changes every 24 months are unwise, no matter that they're the dealer service interval.

That seems expensive. I have my current Audi A6 serviced by an independent Audi specialist and a full service ( inc all filters - pollen etc) costs around £260. That’s with all Audi parts. I think the timing belt is around £300 but if done with a service you save a bit on labour.

If it makes any of you feel any better, the oil change intervals suggested by Hyundai, (and most every other manufacturer) here in North America are every 6,000km. I contacted Hyundai to ask why I had to change the oil more often than the European I20 (hell, even more than every performance car I used to be involved with!) and got a typical "its because of the the colder climate" response. robbing bastards.

I’ve always had mine done at main dealer, purely because my Dad worked there and I could get the parts discounted. I decided i’ll service it myself next time with genuine parts now it’s had a cam belt / water pump and is out of warranty

Is there anything close to a forum approved PHEV (ideally in estate / family sized flavour)?

I need a car, have a drive, would prefer to minimise emissions - there just isn't loads out there (particularly 2nd hand), wondered if anyone had been through the same thought process...

Any Prius owners on here? In November I sent a pal who owns one some links to a trend of cat thefts. The article says BMW, Audis and VWs are being targeted, but the tweet is a video showing a Prius being jacked up and stripped. Sadly his car was subsequently targeted in Camberwell.

Not sure there's much anyone can really do to stop such a thing happening, though.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/11/gangs-stripping-cars-ofcatalyticconverters-broad-daylight-steal/

https://twitter.com/999london/status/1083734255828647937?s=21