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

Streached the outbacks legs with its first run yesterday, 7 hours, one brief stop for fuel at 500km and arriced refreshed. While I do miss the torque and far superior zf7 box in the e61 530d I had, the subaru doesn't break much sweat once in the right rev range. The fuel economy was not great and the smaller tank meant a stop was needed, but the dog needed a wee anyway. I manage 10.8L/100km with progress made.
I would say its quick but far from fast. Its highly stupid having a lump of a 3L in a estate, if it were actually fast then it'd be sensible, the drone of the exhaust at 160 is a bit annoying, however, when you put it into manual mode and get on with it, the flat six does sound lovely.

I can't help think I'd have preferred a legacy with tighter suspension, but the outback I useful. I also can't help but think a fist more torque and hp would be nice.

Overall, for a couple of grand its a banging car and didn't miss a beat, which is why I bought it. I can also sleep with more peace at night, unlike with the bmw, which while never gave me issue always had me worried. Plus rwd low slung car would be hopless.

Yes its a poor person rs6, but its ok.

Ah Ireland, why you hate cars so much….

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€440 more than the UK.

It has been mostly well behaved since the Munich legends days at least

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Should have gone for an n53! The marginal U.K. tax difference is no doubt a little more major over there…

Apparently parking permits up here are priced based on engine size, which suggests that Herman might be expensive.

Haha yeh it sure is, but that wasn’t an option at time of purchase.

Every time tax renewal rolls around (I tax it for 3 months at a time for fear of car dying with an expensive 12 month tax disc), I explore changing it, but the car market over here is absolutely tragic atm. Everything is a 4cyl diesel with 200k kms on the clock for far too much money.

I believe the Ford S-Max has the biggest boot capacity of anything, but of course it's more people carrier than estate car.

fear of car dying with an expensive 12 month tax disc

Can you not get refunds on unused months?

Ah you can of course, minimum 3 months refund.

The real reason is that it’s painful to stump up €1,080 in one go for what feels like nothing in return.

I dream of the day UK has this (or more expensive) vehicle tax and EV on same tax bands.

I own a car and I pay far less than I should for me to use and store it. It should be at least 4 times as much in every instance; tax, insurance, fuel, road charging, parking and maintenance.

OR I can just declare climate emergency so at least I can pretend that I am doing something.

So all stick and no carrot ?

Apart from toll roads and bridging Im not sure UK does road charging … not sure why it doesn’t though.. with today’s tech the portugaise model of box fitted to windscreen and no stopping just pinging would surely be a better way of funding useage.

I guess the carrot is survival of humans past 2050 and not being killed by a cunt on Layhams or not being close passed when i cycling with my kid by a Tesla bro.

MPV rather than estate, but the Renault Grand Espace
has with the back 5 seats removed probably the largest load area available.

N.B. Few petrols around.
Spare parts for diesels probably less available now the Luton site,
(that made the Master/Vivaro vans that used the same diesel engines),
has been sold to Stellantis, (Peugeot Citroen Fiat).

8 times as much for Qashqais or just ban them outright?

This seems very london bubble to me, it works fine in cities and towns where things are close together, and there is feasible public transport. It fails when you look at rural areas, where years of chronic underfunding means there is no public transport, and as good as cycling and walking are, they can't replace every journey. massively increasing the cost of owning a car would just lead to more people leaving rural settings, and seeing as we are already struggling to find people to work in farming, increasing the cost of doing so, means we will be come even more reliant on imports for food.

I think we’ve cracked that- we’re going to use prisoners.

vicious cycle innit

and yes uniform road pricing doesent make sense either

vicious cycle innit

Cycling round is pretty vicious with the hills.

But yes, I don't think it is as easy as making things more expensive to the end users, it needs a much wider approach which works on both the individual and collective.

PTAL 1a and below cheap, anyone above expensive going all the way to 4 times to top end PTAL 6b.

And that depends on where vehicle is stored not registered.

As I said, fine for London, and fine if you can have exclusions, do those with mobility issues get an exception? And who is charge of policing that? do you trust the government to do so currently?!

ptal rating is across UK but yeah enforcement is an issue

where do you start?

What do the Eire govt spend the money on? The roads are worse than here!

Ah sorry, couldn't make your map go beyond London. Was intrigued what my score would be.

I'm not sure where we start, we need to start somewhere, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't lead to an increase in equality, which given the cost of public transport I fear any of it would be.