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

Chris Harris posted a photo of him in one in what looks like Wales so I assume it was on its way back from that shoot.

Probably, even so I know cars need to be driven but I’d have thought that’d be transported to and from rather than risking £1M car on the M4

Hmm. I have access to ramps which come with a semi-private (gated) car park and quite fancy doing my own oil change, but the front of my Civic is very low.

This lowness actually resulted in the only time I've ever got pulled over by the 5-0, but I wasn't pulled over because of anything to do with the car. I think it's fair to say nobody is going to work out why because it was pretty much the most obscure reason to get pulled ever...

Ah.

My other car is a 20 year old Peugeot 306. It actually has rain sensing wipers, speed adjustable too. Has a basic version of traction and stability control and brake force distribution. Has 4 airbags... it's structure is not the safest! But... It is refreshing, get in, sit down, change gears, drive. It's just simple and there's no screens to distract. It's too noisy inside to hear the stereo so your road trips fly by with "guess that rattle, what's that clunk" etc... It's great.

Doesn't sound that different to my 14 year old Civic, but it has at least 6 airbags, 5* NCAP and no rattles/clunks :)

I just leave the VSA and auto lights and wipers on, and we have to be selective about what music we listen to on the motorway because you can't hear some (the speakers basically have zero bass and it's not terrible but the sound insulation is not great). Part of me would like adaptive cruise but I enjoy gamifying my driving by seeing how long I can keep the cruise control on at once (personal record down the A120 at night) and it would knock my mpg...

New speakers and some sound deadening isn't thar expensive or hard to fit.

This is true but I don't think it bothers me enough to spend the money or make the effort!

No harm in trying to get it on the ramps/having a look. I’m a bit picky about torque spec so I’d say you’d want to use a torque wrench on the oil drain bolt/plug. It’s only 25nm on the e46, which isn’t much. I’d definitely have ragged it on way more if I hadn’t checked.

Volvo V70? The boot is massive, with the seats folded flat I can fit 2 bikes in without any disassembly. The boot is definitely bigger than the Passats I've driven for work.

Depends on the car. Not many places you can physically put a powered, enclosed subwoofer in a 996

+1

Also, if you get a <2006 with ‘SE Lux’ pack it comes with the best OEM soundsystem I’ve heard in any car. Very high quality Kevlar cone drivers, Kenwood-made amp with no stupid ‘acoustic processing’ which modern car audio uses to make itself sound louder at the expense of dynamics and actual power, and my car has an OEM 12” sub under the boot floor.

The #bassweight has now rattled the rear door card trims loose though, sounds like a blown driver... Need to take it apart and hot glue.

I do agree that an excellent stereo makes up for a lot else, my silly car has zero modern technology touches, but the Morel amp and speakers plus the focal sub is really very good.

Shirley the c55 would be a great place for a little stereo upgrade?

The b&O system in our A4 is bloody amazing at mid volumes But it does rattle the interior at high volume which kind or ruins things. Also, while it can create really solid bass the amps must be underpowered because it gets flabby and the treble harsh quite quickly. I can imagine an amp upgrade could solve a lot of it.

Depends on the car

Well more what you consider an upgrade.

Having had phat installs before, I think a simple speaker upgrade using the stock sizes paired with an amp, and maybe a bit of matting in a couple of places is sufficient. That is usually not hard or expensive.

Yes if you want a sub you've got to house it. But that's the same in any car.

Obviously a proper sub and full pro install taking into account the car type, acoustics, and carefully paired and balanced equipment will deliver the best results. But that's usually OTT for the average drive.

That's the thing with modern 'branded collab' car stereos; the actual components are shite and have nothing to do with, in this case, B&O, and the system just uses 'clever' processing to make things sound 'better' at, like you say, mid-volume... Similar to how Bose can make their tiny bluetooth speaker fill a room.

I had an Audi A5 as an insurance-supplied hire car for a few months, it too had the B&O system with a zillion speakers and a subwoofer. Sounded terrible, no real bass below 50Hz, you could hear the processing compress the sound as soon as the bass kicked in when the volume was up so that the total power output stayed below that which would melt the puny amp.

I was surprised by this and googled to find photos of the actual speakers; they're all shitty Chinese paper cone drivers with tiny magnets, including the 'sub' which is all of 8" and shallower than a dinner plate.

You can't cheat physics.

An owners forum search might also show up which bits commonly rattle. You could prob get a relatively easy improvement from adding a bit of mass to those bits.

Pretty impressed with the system on our Mk6 Golf. I think it's probably upgraded over the stock... some sort of SE trim or something like that.

It's nothing crazy but so much better than previous cars up to that point.

I never understood why European cars had such shit stock hifis for so long, when over the pond our your average car had something semi-decent.

All depends on if I can be bothered. I do have old dynamat sheets left over from my yoof... But nah, don't want to spend any time on it. It's just a family car, I'm never allowed to crank it anyway!

I did suspect that.

Swirl flaps. I know most people simply remove them and put a blanking plate in, but is there any way of replacing them so they function but they're not a threat to the engine?

Car has done 75k, I was thinking - instead of removing the swirl flaps, could I replace the manifold instead? Is that a stupid solution. I don't mind paying more for the part as removing the flaps increases emissions and decreases engine efficiency.

It’s got a great stereo, including sub, from the factory.

is the only real advantage of pcp over leasing the ability to make a few bob over the balloon price at the end of the deal?

Yes but consider the price of a brand new inlet manifold to replace the swirl flaps.

Although BMW did manage to increase efficiency and reduce emissions by introducing swirl flaps, they only managed to do so by introducing a risky point of failure. It seems negative to remove something doing good, but if the cost of doing good is the large potential of major engine failure, I'd suggest foregoing that.

That and the ability to buy it if you want.

With a lease, the V5 is never even in your name so you have no rights to purchase.