Be Excellent To Each Other

I lived in Auckland for a few months and had two cars broken into and one stolen.

Now in my small rural town I rarely lock the car and often leave the keys in it.

good point, I was being paranoid

So, just to be clear... if it gets stolen it's Gazchaps fault. Right?

It is now

I don't have the car yet.

I know small town and all that but there were some of them round here trying it not long back, caught on Ring cameras walking up to doors and holding a laptop bag in the air and these were only fairly ordinary cars. I think the wherewithal is so easy to come by now that all manner of common or garden scrotes are at it.

Can’t see keyless entry being a ‘feature’ for much longer. Like you say, scrotes are trying it on everywhere now.

A cost effective option that'll make you look like a dick when you get it out of your man bag.

I thought they'd fixed the issues with keyless security (or lack thereof) on newer cars, and it was only some older ones that were vulnerable?

Doubtless my keyless ancient Lexus can be HAXXORED very easily but car crime isn't really a thing here and no one wants a nearly 17 year old Lexus anyway.

Can someone tell Hearthly his account is compromised as he is claiming to have owned the same car for almost 18 months.

It's great, I wish I'd have jumped on the old cheap car bandwagon a looooong time ago, the money I'd have saved scarcely bears thinking about.

The only pisser is the tax which comes in at a hefty £424, it seems quite unfair really, what's the 'planetary cost' of a brand new electric car with all the raw materials it takes to produce and all the horrible shit that goes into the batteries and whatnot? Whereas I'm keeping an old car on the road that paid its debt to the planet nearly 17 years ago and I hardly do any miles in, and it's not even that bad on fuel anyway, clocking in over 30mpg if driven sensibly (which I do). Tax should go on fuel really, then the people who pump out the most greenhouse gases pay the most tax. Or something.

Are you ok? Is this a cry for help?

I took a test drive in a Yaris GR-Four earlier.

Apart from possibly the worst salesman I’ve ever seen being the one to deal with me, it was a pretty good experience.

The car is an absolute hoot to drive, the 6 speed manual gearbox is ace and each gear just slots in beautifully, it pulls like a fucking train and it sounds great too (although the sound is probably fake, there’s no way that a turbo 1.6 3-pot sounds like that)

It’s a real shame that I already have the BMW and the GT-Four, as I’d have one in a heartbeat if we had room for it (and if they weren’t asking for £4K over list price for a used car!)

I read a thing earlier, looks like a limited Yaris GRMN is coming very soon. Preorder one of those instead.

https://carbuzz.com/news/teased-new-toy ... -next-week - I've no idea if that site will fill your device with malware, it popped up in the new tab feed.

It's one of the few cars that looks substantially better in real life then in pictures - I couldn't stand the ludicrous haunches but they just aren't really there.

My car has been delivered, I should be able to get it on Tuesday.


It is a tad bright

Not going to lose that in a carpark

Cor, how did that conversation go?

"I know you ordered it in dark blue, but we've got a match for your trainers available right now?"

I hope it glows in the dark.

That is the standard colour. I have a pair that match the car

Bloody hell. That's a bit.... conspicuous

That's awesome Kov! I love it!

I saw this post and thought it had been written by Krazywookie, and was kind of shocked,,but then realised it was Kovacs and I’m not surprised at all

Enjoy your new ride. I hope you love it.

This is a fair comment.

Looks great kov.

Oh brilliant - that car couldn't be more 'kovacs' if it tried

What colour is it? Couldn’t see it on the configurator.

I adore it

Is that protective film on the B and C pillars, or are they actually painted white?

Hyper green.

yes, they are black. i hope

I wouldn't have it, but I think it's better than dragonscale green.

I took the Superb to my favoured independent now it's it of warranty and Skoda have run out of chances to fix it.

The brake pads Skoda said were 70% worn after year 1 then never mentioned again? 70% worn, leave it til service. Won't need disks.

The knock I took it in for? Shit VAG bush design. Annoying but not dangerous, don't worry about it, unless I really want to spend £500 maybe not fixing it

A tyre is worn, keep it up to pressure, couple of thousand miles in it yet.

A shock is misting oil. Common, not an issue at the moment. We'll look at it when we do the brakes at service.

Needs an alignment? VAG DSG and that means it has to be done precisely and reset after. We don't do that. Not sure the place was would have recommended can still be trusted. Let us find out.

Essentially "Half an hour labour, £36, sod off for 6 months." Despite knowing I want to fix stuff so I can pay them to do minor upgrades so I can be sure in remapping it.

I like good garages. I'm suspicious Skoda know about things like the bushes and shocks and that's why they say "nope, can't reproduce it" to get out of barely-profitable warranty work

Was it a heart? So overdone.

Saw what I'd done, predicted response, left it as is

I has an interesting experience in my new car today, it's the first time I'd driven it to work. I noticed I was sitting at around 80, so put the cruise control on to mitigate this. It's so strange, it slows down to match the speed of the car in front of you and if you maneuver around it, it accelerates again. Weird at first, but I quickly got used to it. It does feel more like driving a car in a game though.

I have that, it is amazing.. I love adaptive cruise control.

That's it! Yeah, I think I'm liking this car a bit more every time I drive it.

The Yaris I test drove last weekend had that on it, and it's not something I've ever really experienced that much before so it did feel very weird.

It also had lane departure and active steering assist - just those two features alone mean I could basically more or less switch off on motorway driving, though, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.

I hate lane assist, as it feels you are fighting with the car, if you don't indicate

I tried Cruise Control once and I bloody hated it. I'm not going to enjoy the sloooooow transition to self-driving cars. I can't even relax as a front seat passenger, so sitting in the driver's seat? Nah mate, I'll drive.

Normal Cruise control is shit, I hated it on my vectra. The adapative is a game changer. As it adjusts to the traffic round you, rather than blinding driving forward

Normal cruise control is fine when there's nothing in front. I use it all the time to go along at the speed limit plus 10%. Admittedly works a lot better in an EV or an automatic where you're not fussing with gear changes as it gets back up to speed etc.

Yes, mine has these too. I do agree with Kov in that I did feel like I was fighting with it a bit, but the closer I got to home, the less I felt that happening.

I test drove one of the newer-shape Leafs a couple of years back that had their "ProPilot" system on it, that included some autonomous driving as well as stuff like lane change assist.

It was fine on the motorway, but woe betide anyone that turns it on on a country road or something, where the white lines at the sides of the road confuse the system and mean that it steers you into oncoming traffic trying to get you back "in lane".

I know what you mean, but I think you have the answer to your problem right there, even if it does seem crazy to indicate when there's no other traffic around.

I've got lane assist and front assist on the Kamiq, but it's very easy to turn them off as there's a button on the steering wheel controls to open all the assist options. I just have to get into the habit of turning them off whenever I start the car.

I have only ever driven a car (a Corolla) with that feature once. I didn't like it either. Perhaps it's better implemented in other cars but I wasn't keen.

It is good to know it can be turned off. I have a horrible feeling the Octavia has it.

Surely it can be turned off permanently in settings? I can't imagine needing to reset something every time I get in my car.

Mandatory on all new cars now, I think? Or certainly will be soon.

Apparently not. Not in mine, anyway. I turned it off in settings this morning, but after stopping and starting again, it had switched back on. I think that's possibly why there's an 'assist' button on the steering wheel, as it really only takes three presses to switch it off, one to open the assist options, one to untick Lane Assist as it's the top item on the menu, and then the final press to close the menu. I'm sure I saw complaints about it being on by default in a Skoda forum a few months ago, but some of those seemed to be from drivers who hadn't noticed the steering wheel button.

Huh. Oh well, at least you know how to do it quickly and easily if you want to.

How are you liking the car now you've had it for a bit?

It would affect the NCAP score if safety features can be disabled permanently.

It may be possible to code it out with the right software

I like it a lot. There are a couple of niggles, but I'm sure you get that with any new car. If I can just get my iPod content in some kind of playable format I'll be happier, but realistically it's not a big deal. I won't be driving the car for hours on end, on my own, and wanting to play all my obscure prog rock, etc. like I do in the van at work.

I did contact the dealership to ask them about the service booklet, as there wasn't one with the documentation, but it turns out that that's in with the onboard software, so it'll tell me when it wants a service.